On Dec. 28, 2020, the Carroll County Board of Supervisors opened their last meeting of the year with a closed session to discuss potential pending litigation per Iowa Code 21.5(1)(c). There was discussion following that and a vote on entering into a settlement agreement with more details to come once the issue was formally resolved. Last Friday, the party involved reached out to Carroll Broadcasting. Louie Grote, who worked in a part-time capacity for the county for around 20 years as an IT technician and also as Director of Veterans Affairs, says an issue arose after a May 2019 announcement that IT Director, Carl Wilburn, was planning to retire within the next year or so. The supervisors opened the application process to fill that role upon his retirement and Grote was one of the applicants.
In late July, 2019, a Minot, N.D. man was offered and accepted the IT position, but called back the next day, rescinding his acceptance. The application process was reopened at that time. Grote says in early July, prior to announcing their offer and its recission, he was informed by the IT Director that he would not be offered the opportunity to interview. Grote says he reached out to two supervisors, Rich Ruggles and Neil Bock.
Grote says he also asked Wilburn to back him in this pursuit.
A conversation with a member of the general public who had been in attendance at supervisor meetings made Grote aware of comments made. He reviewed videos and collected clips. The audio is very grainy, but Ruggles is recorded retelling a previous conversation about one of the candidates and saying, “He is intelligent enough, he is young enough, he seems eager.” Bock is recorded saying one candidate is “More stable and will stick with it as long as we want him to be here.” This spurred Grote to file a complaint with the Iowa Civil Rights Commission claiming age discrimination. They deemed it worthy of investigation and later found some of those statements displayed a discriminatory attitude against older people. Mediation was offered.
His attorney received $38,000 and Grote the rest. He resigned his role in the IT department in August of 2020 after accepting a position with another Carroll business and resigned as Veterans Affairs Director in October of 2020 after helping the new director get acclimated. Grote says there was one main reason for reaching out to the media with this information.
Carroll Broadcasting has reached out to the supervisors for comment and will bring you their response in upcoming newscasts.
