The State Attorney's Office is now involved in the investigation into allegations that former County chief court reporter Lisa Roeser "double-dipped"— handled freelance jobs on County time.
County Court Clerk Danny Kolhage confirmed the State Attorney's involvement in a letter to Key West The Newspaper this week. Kolhage's auditors have been investigating the allegations since September. "My office is cooperating with the State Attorney's Office on certain aspects of this audit," Kolhage said. "However, the audit is not complete and we have not issued a preliminary report."
Throughout 1998, County-paid court reporters said they repeatedly advised then-Chief Judge Sandra Taylor that Roeser was allegedly double-dipping. Taylor would later say that she thought the charge too general, and she refused to launch an investigation.
But when KWTN broke the story and Kolhage announced that he would audit the judiciary's books, both Taylor and new Chief Judge Mark Jones said they supported an investigation.
Even though Kolhage's audit has not been completed, the National Court Reporters Association's (NCRA) Committee on Ethics apparently has enough information to recommend that Roeser be reprimanded. That recommendation was made to the NCRA board last month.
Roeser abruptly quit her job as the County's top court reporter after KWTN called Court Administrator Theresa Westerfield and started asking questions about the double-dipping allegations. That investigation uncovered at least two instances in which Roeser reported on her timesheets that she was at work in her County office when, in reality, she was across town handling freelance reporting jobs.
Roeser told the NCRA Ethics Committee that the incorrect timesheet entries were inadvertent and that she had not intended to double-dip. That could be the case, the members of the Ethics Committee agreed, but they nevertheless recommended that she be reprimanded for (1) "failing to maintain the integrity of the reporting profession" and (2) failing to "guard against the appearance of impropriety."
Kolhage refused to elaborate on the "aspects" of his audit that the State Attorney's Office is investigating; and the State Attorney's Office did not respond to a request for comment.