I cannot allow a lie to prevail,” Hopkins wrote Tuesday in an email to Cartwright. I must defend my integrity and character. “I know the allegation is not true and is certainly not what transpired. City offices were closed Friday, so no one was available for comment. The Sun Sentinel requested Hopkins’ personnel file from the city on Wednesday but has not yet received it. Hopkins said both in the email and an interview he had hired a lawyer to defend any inaccurate information that Pompano Beach may have provided.
Hopkins, who left the city to take a job as a Cobb County administrator, denies the allegation and sent Cartwright and Azzarito an email from his city manager at the time suggesting he was using leave time as approved. The issue involved Hopkins’ tenure as an assistant city manager in Pompano Beach from 2008 to 2013.Īzzarito told Hopkins that a background check revealed that he had been fired from Pompano Beach for improper use of sick or Family and Medical Leave Act time, Hopkins told the Sun Sentinel. “Regardless, the candidate will not be considered now that we have new information from a previous employer.” “At the time of your original inquiry, our understanding was that the candidate withdrew from consideration,” Sullivan said Friday evening. Hopkins said the district removed him from consideration. Hopkins withdrew his name from consideration,” district spokesman John Sullivan told the South Florida Sun Sentinel Tuesday in an email.īut that assertion was contradicted by Hopkins, both in an interview the candidate gave to the Sun Sentinel and an email he sent Tuesday afternoon to Cartwright and David Azzarito, executive director of human resources. Hopkins’ score had been erroneously reduced by 10 points, a difference that kept him from placing first. But then Lynch-Walsh discovered irregularities in the handwritten score sheets from the initial panel of school district administrators. Army major, also worked as a facilities administrator in Cobb County, Ga., where he helped oversee the construction of the current Atlanta Braves stadium.Ĭartwright, however, selected Biswas again and placed him on the Sept. The committee chose as their favorite Willie Hopkins, a city manager for Bartow, Calif., and a former assistant city manager for Pompano Beach. The next week a panel of district volunteers interviewed Biswas and five other candidates. A committee of district administrators found him to be the best-qualified candidate, a district document said.īut Nathalie Lynch-Walsh, chairwoman of the district’s Facilities Task Force, a district watchdog group, alerted board members that Cartwright had failed to comply with a longtime policy that requires candidates to also be interviewed by a panel of community members.Īlthough the policy had been routinely ignored for years, board members, who still were shaken by the release of the grand jury report, directed Cartwright to hold the community forum. 24, Cartwright recommended Harun Biswas, a consultant who had recently retired as vice president for facilities management at Clayton State University in Georgia.
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