• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
MENUMENU
MENUMENU
  • Home
  • About
    • Contact Us
    • FlaglerLive Board of Directors
    • Comment Policy
    • Mission Statement
    • Our Values
    • Privacy Policy
  • Live Calendar
  • Submit Obituary
  • Submit an Event
  • Support FlaglerLive
  • Advertise on FlaglerLive (386) 503-3808
  • Search Results

FlaglerLive

No Bull, no Fluff, No Smudges

MENUMENU
  • Flagler
    • Flagler County Commission
    • Beverly Beach
    • Economic Development Council
    • Flagler History
    • Mondex/Daytona North
    • The Hammock
    • Tourist Development Council
  • Palm Coast
    • Palm Coast City Council
    • Palm Coast Crime
  • Bunnell
    • Bunnell City Commission
    • Bunnell Crime
  • Flagler Beach
    • Flagler Beach City Commission
    • Flagler Beach Crime
  • Cops/Courts
    • Circuit & County Court
    • Florida Supreme Court
    • Federal Courts
    • Flagler 911
    • Fire House
    • Flagler County Sheriff
    • Flagler Jail Bookings
    • Traffic Accidents
  • Rights & Liberties
    • Fourth Amendment
    • First Amendment
    • Privacy
    • Second Amendment
    • Seventh Amendment
    • Sixth Amendment
    • Sunshine Law
    • Third Amendment
    • Religion & Beliefs
    • Human Rights
    • Immigration
    • Labor Rights
    • 14th Amendment
    • Civil Rights
  • Schools
    • Adult Education
    • Belle Terre Elementary
    • Buddy Taylor Middle
    • Bunnell Elementary
    • Charter Schools
    • Daytona State College
    • Flagler County School Board
    • Flagler Palm Coast High School
    • Higher Education
    • Imagine School
    • Indian Trails Middle
    • Matanzas High School
    • Old Kings Elementary
    • Rymfire Elementary
    • Stetson University
    • Wadsworth Elementary
    • University of Florida/Florida State
  • Economy
    • Jobs & Unemployment
    • Business & Economy
    • Development & Sprawl
    • Leisure & Tourism
    • Local Business
    • Local Media
    • Real Estate & Development
    • Taxes
  • Commentary
    • The Conversation
    • Pierre Tristam
    • Diane Roberts
    • Guest Columns
    • Byblos
    • Editor's Blog
  • Culture
    • African American Cultural Society
    • Arts in Palm Coast & Flagler
    • Books
    • City Repertory Theatre
    • Flagler Auditorium
    • Flagler Playhouse
    • Flagler Youth Orchestra
    • Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra
    • Palm Coast Arts Foundation
    • Special Events
  • Elections 2024
    • Amendments and Referendums
    • Presidential Election
    • Campaign Finance
    • City Elections
    • Congressional
    • Constitutionals
    • Courts
    • Governor
    • Polls
    • Voting Rights
  • Florida
    • Federal Politics
    • Florida History
    • Florida Legislature
    • Florida Legislature
    • Ron DeSantis
  • Health & Society
    • Flagler County Health Department
    • Ask the Doctor Column
    • Health Care
    • Health Care Business
    • Covid-19
    • Children and Families
    • Medicaid and Medicare
    • Mental Health
    • Poverty
    • Violence
  • All Else
    • Daily Briefing
    • Americana
    • Obituaries
    • News Briefs
    • Weather and Climate
    • Wildlife

Ethics Commission Finds Against Oel Wingo, ex-Palm Coast Deputy Manager, on Various Charges

October 26, 2011 | FlaglerLive | 7 Comments

Oel Wingo (Palm Coast archives)

Note: the ethics charges against Oel Wingo were dropped in October 2012.

The Florida Ethics Commission has found probable cause that Oel Wingo, a former deputy city manager in Palm Coast and former city manager in Holly Hill, misused her position and resources to tamper with documents, destroy public records and enter into agreements that exceeded her authority. The findings relate to Wingo’s turbulent tenure in Holly Hill, and are the result of an ethics complaint filed last November by then-interim City Manager Mark Barker, at the city commission’s direction and concurrent with Wingo’s firing that month.

Wingo briefly worked as interim city manager in Williston this year, but left and launched Oel Wingo Management Consulting Services in Reddick, just north of Ocala, “a consulting agency that provides services to government agencies with a focus on organizations at the city and county levels,” the firm’s Facebook description reads.

“My attorney has told me not to comment so I cannot comment on anything,” Wingo said when reached by phone this afternoon.

The complaint against Wingo alleged that she “willfully and with a well-informed intent, misuse her official position to enter into employment contracts with senior managers employed by the City of Holly Hill presumably for the purpose of protecting and insulating herself from a possible reduction in pay and benefits to her personal gain,” according to Barker. Wingo was making $125,500 a year. Wingo, the complaint continues, “intentionally falsified official documents to make them appear to have been created and executed on a date prior to actual origination.” Once discovered, she ordered the destruction of the employment contracts and “provided patently false and misleading information to the city commission and office of the city attorney in a direct attempt to avoid responsibility for her official misconduct.”

Wingo had been hired in Holly Hill on Nov. 24, 2009, and started her job in January 2010. She’d been in Palm Coast for the entirety of the previous decade.

The complaint describes an atmosphere of “fear and discontent” that quickly set in after Wingo began her tenure as she fired or demoted nine employees, all within days of taking over, and six more within her first two and half months on the job. Barker wrote that Wingo exaggerated the city’s financial troubles and “utilized all the phantom pseudo emergencies in order to kind of personally orchestrate the funding allocations that were the commission’s responsibility ultimately.”

An attempt to fire Wingo on April 27, 2010, failed, 4-1.


The commission asked Wingo in July to take a pay cut in solidarity with other city employees, whose pay was being reduced subsequent to Wingo’s descriptions of the city’s difficult finances. She refused, saying she’d taken a pay cut when moving from her job in Palm Coast, where she’d been making $131,000 a year.

Speaking in her defense to investigators, Wingo said, according to the state’s findings, that in her first weeks on the job she was directed in individual meetings with city commissioners (which is to say, outside of public meetings) to review the city administration and “tighten it up,” and that she found financial shortfalls or looming shortfalls in many areas, forcing her to reduce staffing. “I didn’t go in with any goals of terminating anybody,” she told investigators. “I did not realize until I got in just how bad, in how bad a shape they were financially.” And so, she continued, “I lost favor with the employees pretty quickly.”

Wingo denies that the implementation of the employment agreements in question had anything to do with protecting her from a salary reduction, and attributed the pre-dating of documents to “an emotional time,” with earlier dates used from what she said had been a template for contracts, not an intentional pre-dating of contracts, though she went ahead and signed the contracts anyway. Once she decided to correct the mistake, she ordered the destruction of the contracts bin question as a means of correcting the error by having new contracts drawn up.

Other employees interviewed by investigators disagreed with Wingo’s characterization of the events in question, saying the pre-dating was calculated, not innocent.

Ethics commission charges are civil, not criminal, but fines can be costly, running from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars each. Wingo may dispute them, though the process of battling commission charges is similar to a trial, and may itself be costly.

Support FlaglerLive's End of Year Fundraiser
Thank you readers for getting us to--and past--our year-end fund-raising goal yet again. It’s a bracing way to mark our 15th year at FlaglerLive. Our donors are just a fraction of the 25,000 readers who seek us out for the best-reported, most timely, trustworthy, and independent local news site anywhere, without paywall. FlaglerLive is free. Fighting misinformation and keeping democracy in the sunshine 365/7/24 isn’t free. Take a brief moment, become a champion of fearless, enlightening journalism. Any amount helps. We’re a 501(c)(3) non-profit news organization. Donations are tax deductible.  
You may donate openly or anonymously.
We like Zeffy (no fees), but if you prefer to use PayPal, click here.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. K says

    October 26, 2011 at 9:19 pm

    Is anybody really surprised? I commend Holly Hill for ridding themselves of her quickly rather than letting her spread her poison throughout City Hall like Palm Coast did for ten years.

    If anyone thinks similar underhanded behavior didn’t and doesn’t continue to go on here in Palm Coast they are not paying attention.

  2. Connie Boswell says

    October 26, 2011 at 9:42 pm

    My first question is what was she doing making that much money for a small town like Palm Coast that is having such a terrible time with the economy to begin with, this is what our taxes are paying?

  3. Riley says

    October 26, 2011 at 9:56 pm

    It makes you wonder what went on while she was employed by the city of Palm Coast.

  4. The Truth says

    October 27, 2011 at 8:27 am

    This doesn’t surprise me at all. I know many who worked with her at the City of Palm Coast and she was a nightmare. She fired many people wrongfully and she’s got what she deserved. I hope she never finds another job in local government again.

  5. [email protected] says

    October 27, 2011 at 10:36 am

    i met her a couple of times and she gave me the impression of not caring about people, she did not lilke being a deputy city manager under mr. landon. she wanted the top position because i guess since she thought she has a phd she could walk on water. she wanted to be addressed as DR, when spoken to. she is a legend in her own mind, goodbye and stay in marion county where you were legally living when you were a city manager for PC

  6. Jojo says

    October 28, 2011 at 10:20 am

    Good riddance is right. Employees who worked for the City of Palm Coast under Oel Wingo labeled her “Oh Well.” Dr my axx.

  7. PJ says

    November 1, 2011 at 8:07 pm

    Another big ego wanna be city manager type. The best part about most of these people in these positions is they could not hold a job working for a fortune 500 company. They seem to fail under their own weight of their own BS. Good riddens and good work Holly Hill.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Conner Bosch law attorneys lawyers offices palm coast flagler county
  • grand living realty
  • politis matovina attorneys for justice personal injury law auto truck accidents

Primary Sidebar

  • grand living realty
  • politis matovina attorneys for justice personal injury law auto truck accidents

Recent Comments

  • Pierre Tristam on The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Monday, June 2, 2025
  • Bo Peep on Flagler County Will Buy 5.2-Acre Parcel on Intracoastal North of Hammock Dune Bridge for Preservation as Parkland
  • T on Palm Coast’s Fire, Parks and Road Impact Fees Are About to Jump 90 to 160% as City Capitalizes Future on Development
  • Alice on GOP Bill Would Kick More Than 3 Million Off Food Stamps and Shift $14 Billion In Costs to States
  • Bill Boots on The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Monday, June 2, 2025
  • Joe D on Why Your Electricity Bill Is So High
  • Ben Hogarth on GOP Bill Would Kick More Than 3 Million Off Food Stamps and Shift $14 Billion In Costs to States
  • Laurel on The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Sunday, June 1, 2025
  • Pogo on The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Monday, June 2, 2025
  • Laurel on American Doctors Are Escaping to Canada. Guess Why.
  • Dennis C Rathsam on Why Your Electricity Bill Is So High
  • Al on GOP Bill Would Kick More Than 3 Million Off Food Stamps and Shift $14 Billion In Costs to States
  • Deborah Coffey on Why Your Electricity Bill Is So High
  • Pogo on Why Your Electricity Bill Is So High
  • Pogo on The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Monday, June 2, 2025
  • Dennis C Rathsam on The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Monday, June 2, 2025

Log in