County Worker Fights To Win Back His Job

Report Not Cleared With Superiors

A former Loudoun County employee who says he was fired for alerting county supervisors to Loudoun's environmental problems is fighting to get his job back.

Bruce McGranahan said he was fired as the county's environmental program coordinator March 7 after he distributed a 100-page report on the county's threatened natural and cultural resources to several members of the Board of Supervisors, without clearing the information with his superiors.

He said he did not go through the chain of command because he was worried that his report would be "watered down" by top county administrators.

McGranahan's attorney said his client plans to appeal the firing today. The attorney said he will file suit against the county if the appeal is denied, citing a state law that protects the right of government employees to express their opinions directly to elected officials.

"I am very angry . . . but I guess not just because of my job, but because this is basically suppressing information that needs to get to the board members and to the citizens," McGranahan said Tuesday. "It's not a question of the content of the report, it's this whole idea that I took it directly to the board and didn't go though the . . . bureaucracy. I believe I did the right thing."

His supervisor, county planning director Julie Pastor, said "the county does not comment on personnel matters."

"From my department's perspective, we're fully committed to the environmental program," she said.

McGranahan, 55, is being represented in the case by a national nonprofit group called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

In a Feb. 20 letter to McGranahan that the group provided to The Washington Post, Pastor said she was considering firing him because his action "constitutes serious misconduct in accordance with . . . the Loudoun County Human Resources Handbook" and offered him a chance to meet with her and state his case.

"The document review process is in place to assure the quality and validity of the work produced by county staff," she wrote. "Your statements during your interview with HR show a blatant disregard for the quality assurance review process and a reliance solely on your own judgment, opinions and sense of timing. You deliberately circumvented the review process despite your assertion that there was nothing controversial in the report."

McGranahan said he hand-delivered the report to the offices of six of the nine board members before other county staff members found out and began retrieving the document.

The report, titled "Loudoun County's Environment: Challenges and Opportunities, 2008-2012," discusses the effects of land development, increasing traffic and other trends on ground and water pollution. It includes a "report card" that assigns grades in categories including air, water, land, living resources, cultural resources and climate change. Most of the grades are C or lower.