The former general counsel who served Interim President Castell V. Bryant as FAMU coughed up well over a hundred thousand dollars for wrongful termination case settlement costs now wants to be the top lawyer for the Palm Beach County School Board.Elizabeth McBride will interview for the chief counsel position on Wednesday, June 22. She is currently an associate counsel for the board. McBride held the general counsel position at FAMU from 2004 to 2007.
The McBride résumé that is posted on the Palm Beach County School District’s website says that she “proposed and implemented a compliance and audit unit approved by the President and Board of Trustees, including the adoption of a compliance and audit charter by the Board of Trustees” while she was the general counsel at FAMU.
The résumé does not talk about the fact that the Castell administration received a qualified financial audit from the state in 2005-2006 despite the “compliance and audit unit” that McBride “proposed and implemented.” That financial audit and the previous one in 2004-2005 were the only two qualified financial audits in the history of FAMU.
FAMU also received the worst operational audit in its history following the implementation of the audit and complaince unit that McBride proposed. There were 35 findings in 2006. State auditors discovered that $39M had been spent without following all the required rules.
The McBride résumé goes on to state that she managed “diverse legal matters including litigation, personnel, labor and employee relations.” It does not mention the fact that two high-profile employees who were fired while McBride was in office later won big out-of-court settlements.
The university had to award former Inspector General Michael E. Brown a three-year job and pay him $90,000 plus $25,000 for his lawyers. FAMU also had to pay former Head Football Coach Billy Joe a settlement of $135,000.
McBride is not the only former senior administrator from the Castell days who has gone on to work for a Florida school district. Back in 2008 former Castell CFO Grace Ali resigned from her job as CFO of the Miami-Dade public school system amid allegations of financial mismanagement. District officials said her “creative accounting” directly contributed to $70 million of the system’s $125 million deficit.