Two of the Jane Doe plaintiffs suing Schuylkill County Commissioner George Halcovage and other Courthouse officials for sexual harassment and workplace retaliation have gotten new jobs.
Last week, Clerk of Courts Maria Casey indicated she’s hired Angela Toomey and Denise McGinley-Gerchak as full-time clerks in her office.
Toomey and Gerchak will get $12.49 per hour and that’ll represent another pay cut for them.
But it gets them back in the Courthouse, from where they’ve been suspended for more than a year.
Suspended Jane Does Get New Jobs
Both Toomey and Gerchak had been working in the Tax Claims office when they filed a federal lawsuit against Halcovage and other Courthouse officials back in 2021. When that happened, the County suddenly decided that their office needed an overhaul.
“It wasn’t working,” one official said.
That decision by the County Commissioners essentially started a snowball effect that led these two of the four plaintiffs in that lawsuit to be nosed out of their jobs. First, they took a demotion and pay cut and then, late last year, were suspended as part of a so-called investigation into alleged activity on LexisNexis.
That internal County investigation allegedly determined that Toomey and Gerchak inappropriately used that computer software for their own gains. However, the “investigation” remains riddled with mystery and inconsistencies. And the Courthouse has outright refused to provide a copy of it to the public even though they brazenly cited it in public as evidence for suspending Toomey and Gerchak initially.
The two employees were never brought back to the tax offices, even after a year suspension.
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