Former head sues Warren Housing Authority

Carol Anne Costa makes multiple allegations, demands jury trial

By Ted Hayes
Posted 6/10/16

The former head of the Warren Housing Authority is suing the agency and its directors for what she claims is a two-year pattern of retaliation against her policies and controversial leadership style, …

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Former head sues Warren Housing Authority

Carol Anne Costa makes multiple allegations, demands jury trial

Posted

The former head of the Warren Housing Authority is suing the agency and its directors for what she claims is a two-year pattern of retaliation against her policies and controversial leadership style, and what she claims was her illegal termination last autumn.

Carol Anne Costa, of Scituate, was fired last September after just over two years on the job. In a 20-page complaint filed in Rhode Island Superior Court, she seeks unspecified compensation for lost wages, humiliation, pain and suffering and more.
Ms. Costa was hired in September 2013, replacing former executive director Claire Martins. From nearly day one, she alleges in her complaint, commissioners and WHA employees questioned her, never let her feel welcome and rarely supported her actions.

Just weeks into the job, when she questioned the terms of Ms. Martin’s severance package and recommended a different package, “a majority of the BOC … rejected” that proposal. Soon after, certain members of the BOC started questioning whether her own contract was valid. That questioning would continue for months.

Over the next year or more, run-ins with BOC members and authority employees continued. Among them:

* Mrs. Costa wrote that she reminded commissioners of the conflict of interest that existed with then-commissioner Alfred DeAngelis, whose son-in-law, Dane Coleman, served as head of maintenance for the authority.

* She informed commissioners that then-member Raymond Rabideau would have to resign his seat in order for his daughter, Carol Rabideau, to qualify for a job at the authority. Though Mr. Rabideau ultimately resigned and his daughter got a job (she was later fired, along with Mr. Coleman), the resignation was “not without obvious displeasure on the part of certain BOC members at being reminded by (Ms. Costa) of … conflicts of interest.”

* In Mach 2014, Ms. Costa told commissioners of what she believed were poor practices and outdated authority policies that she believed needed to be revised. Though commissioner Frank Mansi “appeared pleased” at her willingness to bring efficiencies to the office, “other BOC members refused to acknowledge my concerns and appeared to perceive the plan as unnecessary.”

A subsequent workshop to discuss the plans “did not go well,” she wrote.

* In June 2014, Ms. Costa alleges, she was verbally assaulted by Mr. Coleman and fellow authority employee Jeffrey Dallaire after she moved the authority’s computer server into a new room and changed the locks. She had the server moved, she wrote, after discovering “some anomalies.”

Continuing pattern

In the coming months, Ms. Costa alleges, her work environment deteriorated and subsequent commissioners’ meetings became more “contentious and unproductive.”

Incidents continued throughout that time, she wrote, including insubordination by Mr. Coleman, Ms. Rabideau, and a controversy that erupted after Ms. Costa questioned the presence of a hair stylist who was working at the Kickemuit Village without a valid contract.

At a “chaotic” meeting to discuss the contract, Ms. Costa wrote that she was “publicly humiliated” and a contract less favorable to the housing authority was approved.

Later, after Ms. Costa temporarily left her post for health reasons, the Warren Times-Gazette published an account of the departure that noted her departure on “temporary stress leave.”

The nature of her leave had never been released publicly, she wrote, so it must have been leaked illegally by a board member or someone else with knowledge of her employment status.

On Sept. 9, 2015, Ms. Costa’s attorneys sent a letter on her behalf to commissioners, asserting her claims and proposing a resolution without the necessity of litigation. Instead, she claims, commissioners hastily called an emergency meeting for Sept. 24 with less than the required 48 hours notice. There, they voted to terminate her employment. Ms. Costa wrote that she was not informed of the meeting and was unable to attend.

“Indeed, no members of the public were notified,” she wrote.

In calling the last-second meeting, the defendants (commissioners Frank Alfano, Jeanne Cotta and Louis Rego) were “motivated by malice, wantonness or willfulness of such an extreme nature as to amount to criminality.”

A few months after her departure, both Mr. Coleman and Ms. Rabideau were reinstated to their jobs. Former Warren Police Chief and Town Manager Thomas Gordon currently serves as executive director of the authority.

Demands

In the complaint, Ms. Costa alleges that the defendants violated the Whistleblower Protection Act and the Confidentiality of Health Care Communications and Information Act. She alleges breach of contract, breach of covenant of good faith and fair dealing, the invasion of her privacy and a violation of the Rhode Island Open Meetings Act.

She seeks declaratory judgements against the defendants, wants the board of commissioners’ vote on Sept. 24, 2015 declared null and void, and seeks the imposition of civil penalties for the willful or knowing violations of the Open Meetings Act. In addition, she seeks the awarding of compensatory, punitive and exemplary damages, as well as any other damages allowed under the law. She seeks the awarding of attorney’s fees and the cost of litigation, an award of prejudgement interest, and any other relief deemed reasonable by the court.

Frank Alfano, the current head of the board of commissioners, could not be reached for comment Friday.

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