DHSEx-DHS employee sues DHS Wyoming office
A Wyoming DHS employee s suing the Wyoming’s Office of Homeland Security for what he considers to be arbitrary change in his work conditions, changes which took a toll on his finances and family life.
Gavin Donnelly is seeking $250,000 in a lawsuit he filed against the Wyoming’s Office of Homeland Security director Guy Cameron and deputy director Larry Majerus last Friday in the U.S. District Court of Wyoming. The suit also includes the state and governor’s office.
Donnelly is requesting a jury trial, saying he is owed damages for breach of contract, wrongful termination, and a violation of his civil rights.
The Trib reports that Donnelly was an operations chief in Cheyenne until 2009, when he moved to Casper to work as a field agent. While working in Casper, Donnelly says he was praised, receiving positive evaluations. Joe Moore, the director at the time, told him “to keep up the fine effort.”
When Moore resigned in January 2011, Cameron took over, and later that summer Donnelly received a notice stating that the Casper office was closing and he was being sent back to Cheyenne.
According to Donnelly, moving back to Cheyenne was not a good option for him, causing him to lose around $50,000 on his home, among several other reasons.
When Donnelly met with Majerus and Cameron to discuss other options, they told him that his position could be moved to a lower classification and that he could also be paid less as a result of the lower grade.
Donnelly said it sounded like he was being discharged, becasue they told him he could no longer be a bomb technician and that he would no longer have access to an agency vehicle.
Donnelly eventually decided that he would commute to Cheyenne, but the decision took its toll on his emotion and finances.
“He was spending much less time with his family; he was spending a great deal of time traveling between Cheyenne and Casper at his own expense; he was missing family events; and he began counseling to assist him with the difficulties he was experiencing,” documents say. “Plaintiff did not understand why he was being singled out.”
The suit also says that when Donnelly started commuting to his new job, Cameron and Majerus made the workplace “oppressive and hostile.
According to the suit, Donnelly was eventually forced involuntarily to resign in January 2012, although there was no good cause for doing so.
State officials declined to comment on the situation it is an active case.
