JUNEAU, Alaska — A jury has awarded a whistleblower almost $500,000 for his dismissal from the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services after he called for an investigation into alleged abuses at the Johnson Youth Center, his lawyer said.
Robert Bacolas claimed the state breached his contract, violated the Alaska Whistle-Blower Act and violated his right to free speech by removing him from his job. The Johnson Youth Center is a juvenile-detention facility run by the state.
"This is one sneaky, slimy layoff they didn't get away with," Bacolas said on Feb. 11 from his current home in Medford, Ore.
Bacolas' attorney, Donald E. Clocksin of Olympia, Wash., said the jury sided with his client on every point concerning the verdict.
The investigative reports from Alaska Child Protective Services that Bacolas generated remain sealed, although the jury got to read them.
Bacolas said he could only speak in general terms about his allegations.
But he said if he hadn't spoken up, the reports would have been ignored in state government. As it was there was a cover-up, he said, with state officials removing investigative files from his office.
CPS investigators found "substantial, severe child abuse at Johnson Youth Center," Bacolas said.
"I objected internally at first," he said. Later he told an administrator the problems rose to a level of public concern.
He found that nearly 100 CPS cases in the Barrow area were not being investigated and the files were closed, he said. "I went up to Nome and fired every (CPS) person there."
Johnson Youth Center Executive Director Greg Roth would not comment on the case and referred questions to Janet Clarke, the DHSS financial and management services director, who was named as a co-defendant in the case. Clarke would not comment and referred questions to the Alaska Department of Law.
That agency's spokesman, Mark Morones, said he could not comment on the allegations or whether the state would appeal.
"The state will have to take a look at it before making a decision of any possible future action in the case," he said.
The jury determined that Clarke, the department's financial and management services director, wrongfully interfered with a letter addressing Bacolas' continued employment with the state.
Bacolas said he saw problems throughout the state. At one location, there was a case of a social worker taking children into protective custody. The social worker was arrested on a drunken-driving charge after getting the kids to the police station.
"Nobody was doing anything about it," he said.
In 2001, after causing problems in the department by threatening to go public, Bacolas said, he agreed to take another state job in Juneau. He called that job the governmental equivalent of Siberia. He had worked as manager of human-resources development for two years when his job was eliminated from Gov. Frank Murkowski's budget.
The jury assigned values to specific findings. There was $167,019 for past and future lost wages and benefits and $100,000 for past and future emotional distress. Jurors placed loss of Alaska Permanent Fund distributions for Bacolas, who is married with two children, at $84,500.
Considering some of the redundancies in the jury's verdict, Clocksin proposed to the court on Feb. 11 that the award total $492,871, plus legal fees. Juneau Superior Court Judge Larry Weeks has yet to interpret the jury's award and enter a final judgment.
Even with that sort of judgment, "I lost money on the deal," Bacolas said. He said he would have done much better financially to stay in state government and retire.
He has a good job now, he said, working in human resources. He declined to name the business.