Pa. Health Department official fired over $800K mistake can't have her job back

[TexasTowelie]

A former state Department of Health official who cost the agency $800,000 by approving computer upgrades that weren't properly authorized can't have her job back, a Commonwealth Court panel ruled Wednesday.

Despite her claims to the contrary, there is plenty of evidence Marina O. Matthew is responsible for the expensive snafu that prompted her firing as public health program director, the court concluded in an opinion by Judge Anne E. Covey.

Matthew appealed to the court after the state Civil Service Commission upheld her 2014 termination.

The short version of Matthew's somewhat complicated story is that she was found to have prompted a vendor to go ahead with a computer system upgrade without going through proper channels to obtain authorization for payment for the work. That resulted in contract violations that required the state to pay an $800,000 settlement, Covey noted.

Read more: http://www.pennlive.com/news/2017/09/pa_health_department_official.html

[BigmanPigman]

1. If it was a simple, innocent error I would feel badly but

it seems more complicated. I remember my school board didn't give a lucrative contract to a company since the decimal point was in the wrong place on the estimate. I felt that was too harsh.