Escambia County Commissioner Jeff Bergosh's text messages indicated he wanted former Medical Director Dr. Rayme Edler fired long before her employment ended with the county, which could contradict the county’s legal argument that his messages on his phone have nothing to do with Edler’s pending lawsuit.

The News Journal has obtained files of public records of Escambia County officials’ communications that also included a document that contains Bergosh’s text messages that is at the center of a hearing Monday in a lawsuit between the county and Edler's allegations the county made false Medicare claims to the U.S. government.

A federal judge will decide whether those messages are public record and can be used in the lawsuit.

Former county employee Jonathan Owens provided Edler’s attorneys with the text messages, which he said was anonymously provided to him.

Owens worked as Commissioner Doug Underhill’s aide at the county for eight years and unsuccessfully ran against Bergosh for the District 1 commission seat in the 2020 Republican primary.

Separately, an anonymous source provided the News Journal with the files after it published a story on the legal battle earlier this month. Owens verified to the News Journal the file appeared identical to the one he provided to Edler's attorneys, and the number of messages contained in the file was the same.

‘Responsive text messages’

Edler’s attorneys, who are seeking the court’s permission to review the file as part of the lawsuit, said in their own legal filings the county has “long maintained that responsive text messages relating to public business do not exist on County employees’ personal cell phones.”

However, a review of the file leaked to the News Journal shows some messages could indeed be relevant to public business and Edler’s claims of retaliation contained in the lawsuit.

One alleged exchange that appears to be between Bergosh and his wife, Sally, occurred after the county approved a new contract with the University of Florida to provide medical directors that made Edler’s job irrelevant while she was on leave through the Family Medical Leave Act.

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In her lawsuit, Edler alleges the contract was used as a pretext to fill her position while she was on a protected leave and she was offered a role providing medical care only to the jail. Edler refused to accept the role, and the county fired her for “job abandonment” in September 2021.

The alleged message exchanges began on July 22, 2021, when Bergosh’s wife asked him how the County Commission meeting that morning went. At that point Bergosh began discussing county business with her, making the conversation a public record under Florida’s Sunshine Law.

Under Florida's public records law, any written communication about county business by a county official is a public record, even on a personal device.

Bergosh responds that a discussion on the controversial local retirement plan for commissioners was dropped from the discussion before allegedly saying:

Escambia County argued in court filings that the possession of the file was a waste of judicial resources, a violation of Bergosh’s personal privacy, and a potential violation of Florida law.

“The Excel spreadsheet contains messages that include personal identifying information, confidential medical information, family medical information, personal financial information, and other communications that do not involve, or relate to, Escambia County business or Dr. Edler’s pending case,” County attorneys wrote. “Critically, the Excel spreadsheet produced by Edler’s counsel does not offer any information or evidence to show where, when, or how it was created, nor is there any custodian of records to verify the veracity and authenticity.”

What is the file?

In a signed affidavit, Bergosh said he had turned over his personal phone to the county's IT Department in February 2022 because it was having issues, and he wanted a backup to preserve any public records before an overseas trip.

Bergosh said he was given a copy of his files and directed IT staff to delete all other copies.

The metadata of the file reviewed by the News Journal indicates it was likely created on Feb. 1, 2022, at 6:07 p.m.

The file is a spreadsheet containing 60,774 lines of messages, but some messages take up multiple lines. The approximate number of individual text messages in the spreadsheet is 52,486. Each message contains a timestamp, and the number of messages can be quickly counted by totaling the number of timestamps in the file.

The file appears to contain messages covering a period from Oct. 18, 2019, to Feb. 1, 2022.

The News Journal identified message threads of public interest in the file using keyword searches in an effort to focus on the texts concerning public business, not personal messages involving Bergosh and his family. In total, Edler’s name or the term “medical director” is mentioned in 102 messages, with most being sent to Bergosh.

When asked about the existence of the text message file in the Edler lawsuit earlier this month, Bergosh said the issue is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and he would not comment on the issue during the investigation.

"It's an active federal investigation, and they're looking into how Jonathan Owens acquired these and how they were stolen from the county's servers," Bergosh said. "Because of that, I have no comment to make during this investigation."

The FBI has said it cannot confirm or deny the existence of any investigation into the matter.

Bergosh has since publicly commented on the issue on his blog saying that only about 10% to 15% of the text messages are public record.

“Not embarrassed about anything I did,” Bergosh wrote, responding to a comment on his blog. “(I’m) disgusted about the prurient, deviant, dishonest and soul-less individual who would get his jollies reading my personal, private communications with family, children, nephews and close friends. Since you asked......Make no mistake--this is not about any lawsuit; it is about the crime that was committed when my information was stolen.”

Retaliation allegations

The primary focus of the lawsuit is alleged false claims made by the county to the U.S. government about providing ambulance services without properly certified personnel as required by Medicare and “up-coded” claims to more expensive ones than were actually provided.

A portion of the lawsuit centers around alleged retaliation against Edler while she reported training and medical care issues to the Florida Department of Health in 2019 and further claims of retaliation when she was fired from the county in 2021.

When Edler’s 2019 allegations about falsified training records became public, it upended the county government and became a human resources quagmire, spawning allegations of retaliation against all sides and multiple lawsuits.

Edler filed a defamation lawsuit against a county political activist and outspoken critic of her actions. The lawsuit was later dropped and Edler ordered to pay all attorney's cost.

Paramedic Matt Selover sued the county over its handling of his retaliation complaint against Edler, which it settled for $200,000 after Bergosh publicly and privately advocated for Selover.

A state law enforcement investigation resulted in the arrest of four senior-level EMS officials who were charged with falsifying training documents based on Edler’s report.

Two of the four arrested entered a pre-trial diversion program and avoided criminal penalties, the former EMS chief pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges, and the training director was adjudicated guilty of seven felony charges of falsifying an official document.

Escambia County itself settled with the Florida Department of Health. The county paid a $5,000 fine over the training issue and accepted a letter of reprimand on the county's license to operate an EMS service in the state.

Edler's lawsuit includes a timeline of events and argues they speak to evidence of the county’s willingness to suppress problems raised in the county’s Emergency Medical Services.

‘Is the county still paying Edler? I hope not.’

One alleged exchange that may be relevant in the case involved former Interim County Administrator Matt Coughlin on Sept. 13, 2021, after Bergosh published a deposition transcript of Ed Spainhower, a County Human Resources employee, on his blog.

Spainhower wrote an initial report on paramedic Selover’s May 2019 allegations against Edler and concluded there was the appearance that Edler had retaliated against Selover. The report was never finalized for months, and when it was officially provided to Selover, its conclusions were reversed after a second review, which led to Selover’s lawsuit.

Coughlin resigned from the county in April 2019 amid the public disclosure of the EMS training scandal and was serving his final 90 days when Selover filed his harassment complaint against Edler.

The response “*spainhower” appears to be correcting the typo “Yes been hour.”

Bergosh, Coughlin, Spainhower and Peppler are listed among 13 county officials mentioned in Edler’s lawsuit she alleges participated in retaliation against her in her attempt to report unlawful activity.

Status of the case

Edler filed her lawsuit in May 2020 under the False Claims Act while she was still the county’s medical director.

Under the False Claims Act, an individual with knowledge of fraud against the government can sue on behalf of the government. Anyone found liable under the FCA must repay the government triple what it was overpaid by the government, plus an adjustment for inflation and interest.

Escambia County makes thousands of claims a year to Medicare and Medicaid through its EMS service, so if it is found liable, it could face millions in penalties.

The county has already tried to have the lawsuit dismissed for “failure to state a claim” in 2021.

Senior U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, who died earlier this year, denied the county’s attempt to dismiss the lawsuit in a short two-page ruling in August 2021.

Vinson noted that under the FCA at that stage of the litigation, he was required to assume the allegations were true and had to rule on if the complaint properly stated a legal claim.

Vinson said Edler’s attorney's argument for moving the lawsuit forward was “comprehensive and compelling,” and he rejected the county’s arguments as “unpersuasive.”

Since the 2021 ruling, the lawsuit has been amended to add a second claim under the FCA related to the same issues and reassigned to U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers. The county has sought to dismiss the new portion of the lawsuit. The county’s new dismissal argument is still pending a ruling from Rodgers.

Meanwhile, the county has sought a protective order seeking the deletion of Edler’s attorneys’ copy of Bergosh text messages as part of the case, alleging there is a federal investigation into how Owens obtained the file.

The county turned over a copy of the file to Federal Magistrate Judge Hope Cannon on July 28 for her private review of the relevance to Edler’s lawsuit.

Cannon is set to hear oral arguments on the Bergosh file and other discovery-related issues in the lawsuit on Monday.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Commissioner Jeff Bergosh texts mention Edler, ousted EMS doctor