{"id":11588,"date":"2021-05-31T01:37:27","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T05:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=11588"},"modified":"2021-05-31T01:37:38","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T05:37:38","slug":"fired-florida-employee-rebekah-jones-gets-whistleblower-status-restored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2021\/05\/31\/fired-florida-employee-rebekah-jones-gets-whistleblower-status-restored\/","title":{"rendered":"Fired Florida employee, Rebekah Jones, gets whistleblower status restored"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A former Florida Department of Health employee has received whistleblower status a year after being fired for repeatedly violating the agency\u2019s policy about communicating with the media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The employee, Rebekah Jones, had raised questions about Florida\u2019s COVID-19 data after being ousted as the data\u2019s curator. State officials said she was fired for insubordination after being reprimanded several times, according to state records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Miami Herald reported<\/a> that the Office of the Inspector General told her attorneys on Friday that \u201cthe information disclosed does meet the criteria for whistleblower status as described by \u2026 Florida statutes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jones, who helped build the state\u2019s online presentation of its COVID-19 data, received national attention a year ago when she sowed doubt about the information being reported by the state when Florida was an epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. She suggested that Health Department managers wanted her to manipulate information to paint a rosier picture and that she pushed back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A letter from Inspector General Michael J. Bennett, the Herald reported, said Jones\u2019 complaint demonstrates \u201creasonable cause to suspect that an employee or agent of an agency or independent contractor has violated any federal, state or local law, rule or regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the state\u2019s whistleblower rules, Jones could be reinstated or be eligible for compensation if an investigation finds her firing was in retaliation for the concerns she raised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jones told the Herald that while not \u201cvindication,\u201d she called the inspector\u2019s ruling \u201ca start\u201d and \u201ca big push forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spokespeople for the governor\u2019s office and the Department of Health downplayed the significance of the ruling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhistleblower status doesn\u2019t substantiate any claims. It simply provides confidentiality, and means someone made a complaint,\u201d the governor\u2019s spokesperson, Taryn Fenske, told the Herald.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A former Florida Department of Health employee has received whistleblower status a year after being fired for repeatedly violating the agency\u2019s policy about communicating with the media. The employee, Rebekah… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[415,414],"class_list":["post-11588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional-and-world-news","tag-gets-whistleblower-status-restored","tag-rebekah-jones"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}