A whistleblower lawsuit was filed this week by a Murray State University employee, who alleges she was pushed out of her job due to voicing concerns about school leadership potentially violating state procurement laws.
Plaintiff Darcie Liddle is still technically employed as Murray State’s procurement services director, but was one of two employees placed on a year-long leave and stripped of all duties in early August, without explanation. Murray State’s human resources director Haley Stedelin also resigned at the time, objecting to the process in which Liddle’s supervisor and Vice President of Finance and Administration Laura Foltz was placed on leave.
Liddle’s lawsuit alleges that President Ron Patterson was angered by her bringing up concerns about several of his actions related to the school’s athletics department, including a multimedia rights contract, consultant spending and the bidding process on a proposed athletics park project.
The complaint also alleges sex discrimination, saying that Liddle and other senior female staffers faced punishments for airing complaints that similar male staffers did not receive.
A spokesperson for Murray State did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
The lawsuit was first reported on by The Murray Sentinel, a local nonprofit news organization.
Kentucky Public Radio received more than 3,000 pages of documents from the university in response to an open records request in August seeking communications to and from Liddle, Foltz and Stedelin in the lead up to their departures that involved Patterson and the athletics department. Some of those responsive records are cited in Liddle’s lawsuit filed on Monday.
Liddle’s complaint states that one of the first major conflicts with Patterson was the signing of a lucrative 10-year multimedia rights contract with Learfield Communications.
She alleges that Beth Ward, her predecessor who retired last year, would not approve of the Learfield contract because of her concern that it violated state procurement law requiring competitive bidding. The complaint states that after Liddle took over the position and voiced the same concerns, Patterson signed the contract anyway.
After Liddle emailed Ward her concern with the contract’s signing, she alleges that her supervisor Foltz informed her “that President Patterson was furious about the email and believed Ms. Liddle was responsible for the scrutiny concerning the Learfield transaction,” which was written about at the time by The Murray Sentinel.
“Ms. Liddle reasonably understood from those communications that President Patterson viewed her insistence on procurement compliance and her documentation of the Learfield transaction as disloyal and that her employment was in jeopardy,” states the complaint.
Liddle also alleges that Patterson repeatedly ignored concerns from her and the university’s attorney about the process for consultant payments and other contracts.
Over the summer, Liddle again raised concerns relating to the proposed “Racer Entertainment Village,” a mixed-use athletics and entertainment district within the university's sports park.The complaint states she raised concerns about the project’s feasibility study and “whether the bid process and scoring had been conducted fairly and in compliance with applicable procurement requirements.”
In a July 20 email from Liddle to Foltz and Murray State general counsel Rob Miller, obtained by KPR through its open records request, she laid out her significant concerns related to the vendor selected in the feasibility study review.
Liddle said that most committee members contacted her to “express significant concerns” about the district vendor that was selected against their wishes, questioning the firm’s experience and qualifications. She added that there were “significant inconsistencies in the scoring from one evaluator” that appeared to swing the contract away from one company and to another.
“As the individual responsible for facilitating this process, I have remained neutral and have not participated in the evaluation or scoring,” Liddle wrote in the email. “However, after reviewing the submitted evaluations and receiving feedback from a majority of the committee, I am not comfortable proceeding with an award without additional review and guidance. Given the concerns raised regarding both the committee's consensus and the scoring inconsistencies, I would like further guidance before proceeding.”
Two weeks later, Foltz was placed on leave by the university without explanation. Stedelin resigned as HR director the next day, taking issue with the process used to discipline Foltz and refusing to sign the letter to Stedlin that Patterson “had written on her behalf.” The following day, Miller placed Liddle on leave, as well.
Liddle’s whistleblower lawsuit seeks reinstatement and punitive damages from the university.
