Manatee set to vote on firing County Administrator Coryea after blackmail accusation
A special meeting to determine whether the Manatee County Commission will vote to fire County Administrator Cheri Coryea is scheduled for Feb. 17.
The meeting comes after Tuesday’s stunningly emotional confrontation between commissioners George Kruse and Carol Whitmore. Kruse, who publicly admitted to an affair, accused Whitmore of trying to use photos of Kruse to manipulate his votes on the board.
Whitmore denied any attempt at extortion, noting that she knew of the affair and had urged Kruse to be more careful out in public.
“I could care less about your personal life, but you do have the most powerful job in Manatee County,” Whitmore told her fellow at-large commissioner. “When you’re a county commissioner, everybody knows who you are, even if you don’t think they do.”
Kruse also reintroduced a motion to terminate Coryea’s contract Tuesday. He believes Coryea played a central role in what he called a poorly noticed public meeting between him and Whitmore on Friday. Kruse did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The county faced significant backlash once the public learned of the meeting, with residents and other commissioners arguing that they had no idea it was taking place.
Due to the timing of the photo’s circulation and Friday’s unorthodox meeting, Kruse said he felt that Coryea was part of a scheme to embarrass him and tarnish his reputation.
“We hear campaign rhetoric about swamps and underhanded dealings, but you don’t fully understand it until you’ve seen it,” Kruse said Tuesday.
Whitmore said the severity of Kruse’s allegation forced her to hire a lawyer. Reached for comment Thursday afternoon, her attorney denied any and all allegations of blackmail.
“To be very clear, any allegation of any actions even remotely related to extortion or blackmail is patently false,” said Brett McIntosh, a Sarasota-based trial attorney. “Any allegation that Ms. Whitmore ever showed photographs to Mr. Kruse is false.”
In an interview with the Bradenton Herald on Tuesday evening, Coryea denied any knowledge of the photos or any blackmail attempt. She said she was following Whitmore’s direction when she scheduled the meeting between Whitmore and Kruse.
“I was just asked to try to seek a meeting. That’s it,” Coryea said. “No other details, no other reasoning behind include these people or don’t include these people. There was no intention on my part. We followed procedure.”
The County Attorney’s Office said the meeting was properly noticed, but legal staff would have preferred to have every commissioner notified of the meeting, in case they wanted to also attend.
Whitmore and other commissioners came to Coryea’s defense, arguing that it wasn’t fair to throw Coryea in the middle of the situation.
“It is a lawful meeting, but I could’ve done it better,” Whitmore said. “Cheri has seven bosses and for one of them to ask her to orchestrate a meeting is not a fireable offense.”
“Mr. Kruse, in all due honesty, I don’t that has anything to do with the county administrator,” added Commissioner Reggie Bellamy during Tuesday’s meeting.
The board previously voted in support of moving forward with Coryea’s termination in November, just two days after the new commissioners were sworn in. Those who voted in support of the motion back then were pleased to see the motion back on track.
“Obviously, we all know where I stand on this issue. I saw examples of bad government long ago when I was on the campaign trail,” Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge, who first led the charge to fire Coryea, said Tuesday. “I think back to the Lena Road land deal. I look at this poorly managed meeting Friday and it seems manipulative and, ultimately, in government, these are parlor tricks we’re seeing.”
In December, Kruse played a pivotal role in saving Coryea’s job with the county. He changed his mind and said he would rather give Coryea a chance to prove that she could oversee the county’s transition into more conservative policies. But following Friday’s events, he said he could no longer place faith in her leadership.
“I no longer believe that meeting quantitative benchmarks can ever give me assurance or comfort in the continuation of a fundamentally flawed system,” Kruse said Tuesday.
Commissioners voted 4-3 on Kruse’s motion ordering the county attorney to give Coryea a 15-day notice of a discussion regarding the termination of employment with the county, which is required by her contract. Commissioners Kruse, Van Ostenbridge, Vanessa Baugh and James Satcher voted in favor, while Commissioners Whitmore, Bellamy and Misty Servia cast dissenting votes.
“Am I saying that Cheri is terrible? No, I’m not saying that,” Baugh said Tuesday. “What I’m saying is every board member has to look at this and say, ‘Do we have confidence?’ Because we cannot move this county forward and make some of the decisions we have to make unless every commissioner feels that we have confidence in our county administrator. That’s what, to me, this is all about.”
The Board of County Commissioners is expected to make a final decision about Coryea’s contract on Feb. 17. The meeting will begin at 1:30 p.m. in the Longboat Key Room at the Bradenton Area Convention Center, 1 Haben Blvd., Palmetto.
This story was originally published January 28, 2021 at 3:48 PM.
