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Lindberg v. California Dep't of Education10/31/2005
opriation for Adult Education?" Not long after this conversation, Cortina told Zimmerman that the "people upstairs" (including Eastin) had lost confidence in him. He was forced to resign and was eventually replaced by Joan Polster.
4. La Hermandad Receives Funding Despite Evidence of Fraud
In April 1996, Cortina requested services to audit five CBO's, including La Hermandad, who had been identified as "possibly" having serious "fiscal deficiencies." In January 1997, memos from Cortina informed Eastin that the auditor had found several irregularities with La Hermandad and recommended denying grant money to the agency for 1996- 1997. Soon thereafter, Cortina told the Los Angeles Times that La Hermandad was not "eligible" for ESL-Citizenship program funds and that even if the organization produced an audit immediately it was "highly implausible" it would be funded for next year. Yet in October 1997, Cortina approved a $3.5 million payment (almost half of the total federal ESL grant money) to La Hermandad.
5. Retaliation Against Bartlett
Lynn Bartlett, like Lindberg, was a consultant in Adult Education who had done compliance reviews of the ESL-Citizenship programs. She found La Hermandad and other CBO's, "totally out of compliance" and misusing federal funds. When she told the head of one CBO that his program was out of compliance, he threatened her and told her Senator Polanco was a friend of his. Subsequently a lobbyist contacted her supervisor and complained about Bartlett's findings. The agency got funded despite Bartlett's report, because someone higher than she in authority approved it.
Bartlett received a letter of reprimand from her supervisor, Joan Polster, for refusing to travel to the Santa Rosa area, even though such travel had not been properly authorized by her superiors. She was later suspended for two weeks without pay for writing an "unauthorized letter" to a newsletter, in which she criticized giving federal grant money to an ineligible agency for the homeless. Neither Bartlett, nor Thomas Bauer, who worked as a CDE consultant for 28 years, had ever heard of CDE disciplining an employee for an "unauthorized" letter.
6. Additional Retaliation Against Lindberg
By December 1996, Lindberg's stress level was high, he had no work at Career Development, and his pleas to management were being ignored. He was beginning to experience physical symptoms such as chest pains, tightness in his chest and pain on exertion.
At an employee Christmas party on December 17, 1996, Eastin presented Lindberg with a commendation for his 25 years of service with CDE. While shaking her hand and commanding her full attention, Lindberg asked her directly why she was praising him for doing a good job, yet had allowed him to be transferred; he also asked why she was allowing the fraud to go on and when was she going to do something about it. Eas
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