The former city attorney for Nogales, Ariz. has filed a federal civil suit against the city and many of its high-ranking officials.
Jan Smith-Florez, 64, claims she was fired in April 2008 as a result of her blowing the whistle on back-door dealings involving four City Council members, according to the complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court.
"There are tapes of this" (meeting), Smith-Florez's lawyer, Douglas Clark, told the Arizona Daily Star. "There's a tremendous amount of evidence that's what happened."
Calls made by the Star to interim Nogales City Attorney Joe Machado and Deputy City Manager John Kissinger were not returned Friday.
Smith-Florez, a former Santa Cruz County Attorney and State Court of Appeals judge who also briefly ran for governor in 2006, was hired as city attorney in April 2007 by then-Mayor Ignacio Barraza.
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Barraza, 38, died suddenly of heart failure in November 2007.
Barraza's position, as well as that of the city manager, remained vacant for several months before former Nogales Mayor Marcelino Varona arranged a pair of meetings with council members Octavio Garcia-Von Borstel, John Jackson, Armando Lopez and Jose Luis Padilla to put together a deal to fill those open positions, the complaint reads.
The group agreed in late March 2008 to appoint Garcia-Von Borstel as mayor, Jaime Fontes as city manager and Ramon Felix to the council seat that Garcia-Von Borstel would be vacating, according to the complaint.
Smith-Florez told the council at the April 2, 2008 council meeting they were in violation of state open-meetings laws because of this agreement, but the council still voted in favor of the appointments, after which Smith-Florez reported the council to the Arizona Attorney General's Office.
The state's Open Meeting Law Enforcement Team investigated, and in July sanctioned the council and put it on notice for a year.
Smith-Florez also sought to get a temporary restraining order preventing the April 4, 2008, swearing-in of the new appointees, but Garcia-Von Borstel got a Nogales City Court judge to swear in the new appointees an hour earlier than scheduled, to make the restraining order moot, the complaint reads.
Smith-Florez was fired at an April 9, 2008, special council meeting but was not allowed to defend herself, the complaint said.
