Tag: Tina Shumate

Mississippi Workers Comp Judge Awards Death Benefits to Michaela Hill’s Husband, A DMR Friends and Family Scandal Update

For the Walker and Shumate clans, the time spent in prison for their role in the DMR scandal is over. It took a few years but the family of the late Michaela Hill finally gets some much needed closure. Point Park explained it best in a comment that I now bump up here:

Doug good things come to those that defend justice and the truth. Sources say you will receive a late Christmas present in the New Year. Let’s hope the Hill and Sabatini families finally have some good news. Meanwhile slimy Bill Walker appears on WLOX as if nothing happened and all the while claiming he did nothing wrong. Grandchildren playing all over in the news clip. Cheap sadistic photo opp. I wonder if this creepy [email protected]&$ ever wonders what the grandchildren of Michaela feel like without their grandmother. I’m sure Bill will be true to his word and participate in public events. Local sources have already spotted him at baseball games malls and even a charity event. It leaves one to wonder when Bill will appear in church. Slime ball has much to be forgiven for. Perhaps he will sit next to a member of the Hill or Sabatini family and ask forgiveness for what he and Tina Schumate did to Michalea.

Below is the full 32 page decision of the Administrative Law Judge finding Ms. Hill’s suicide to be work related and awarding her late husband a death benefit of $438.68/week for the next 450 weeks (37 plus years). Those interested in Slabbed’s coverage of the DMR Scandal can click here to get all the posts including our coverage of the scandal. Continue reading “Mississippi Workers Comp Judge Awards Death Benefits to Michaela Hill’s Husband, A DMR Friends and Family Scandal Update”

From the DMR beat: Rumor sweeping the coast Tina Shumate out of jail after serving just 41 days (Updated)

The MDOC Inmate Locator still shows Ms. Shumate at the correctional facility in Leakesville.  I will shake the tree to see what I can find out.

Update:

The Sun Herald is reporting Shumate is at the MDOC facility in Rankin County, having been transferred from the Harrison County Jail last Friday.

Exactly one thought on the Shumate state guilty plea

I’ll term these thoughts 1 and 1a in response to Eye Spy:

It is unusual for someone entering a guilty plea to immediately go into custody of MDOC let alone do it voluntarily yet that is exactly what Tina Shumate did last bad news Friday. With no activity on PACER and a looming late September trial date before Judge Keith Starrett this can only mean that when Ms. Shumate makes an appearance before the court she’ll be wearing prison orange and likely, shackles. Thought 1a from the old days and Dr. Demento: Continue reading “Exactly one thought on the Shumate state guilty plea”

DMR Document Dump Miscellany: More Heberts and a Shumate plus Miller Time

It’s Miller time so let them eat shrimp!

By Anonymous Leak to Slabbed New Media
By Anonymous Leak to Slabbed New Media LLC

2014 Coastal Legislative Reception on the Taxpayers

We’ve had some people asking about the administration of the Coastal Impact Assistance Program (CIAP). Here are two interesting sets of CIAP Technical Review Committee Documents: Continue reading “DMR Document Dump Miscellany: More Heberts and a Shumate plus Miller Time”

DMR Memorandum lend color to insider purchase of parent’s land with Coastal Impact Funds

This is the defense side of things per Anita Lee’s DMR employee’s South Mississippi home searched circa January 2013.

The DMR paid $245,000 for the lot on a bayou near the Pascagoula River.

Holleman said Shumate removed herself completely from the land transaction. He said her parents, Curt and Ann Hebert, saw the program advertised and approached the DMR about buying the property.

“When her parents got involved, she had nothing to do with it,” Holleman said. “There will be documents that support that.”

I have what I believe to be the documents to which Tim Holleman referred. Continue reading “DMR Memorandum lend color to insider purchase of parent’s land with Coastal Impact Funds”

DMR Timesheets raise troubling questions regarding contract worker payment and supervision (Updated)

Slabbed has obtained timesheets related to contract work performed by Samantha Hebert at the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources.  Before I show you folks what I have we need to back up in time, first to December of 2012 when the DMR Scandal was still young when Anita Lee and Karen Nelson detailed the DMR friends and family program for the Sun Herald:

Relatives of DMR employees also work at the agency, although DMR directors say the hirings comply with the agency’s nepotism policy. The nepotism policy prohibits employees from participating in the hiring process for, or supervising, immediate family members, which includes in-laws. It does not prohibit family members from working at DMR.

Walker said his daughter-in-law was hired by DMR Public Relations Director Lauren Thompson and works as a special projects officer. Trinity Walker, wife of Scott Walker, is paid $27,700 a year, according to state records.

Walker said Thompson also hired Samantha Hebert, the sister of Tina Shumate, DMR’s director of coastal management. Hebert works under contract as a videographer, and has been paid $91,300 since October 2010, state records show. Hebert could not be reached at DMR to comment on her job.

When asked how to reach her sister, Shumate said, “She works for Dr. Walker, so you’d have to talk to him.”

Shumate, recently scrutinized in a federal audit for using grant money for DMR’s purchase of her parents’ Pascagoula property, also has a son and brother-in-law who were contract workers. Shumate said she was not involved in hiring her son, who participated in a summer work program while in high school. She said Walker hired her brother-in-law, who was employed only a short time.

The excerpt is very important for a number of reasons but before I get into that we need to fast forward to this past May when Susan Perkins, Leslie Gollott and Grant Larsen copped pleas to state charges related to their tenure of employment at DMR. To the extent Anita’s story that was linked in my post on the topic is now 404, I use the AP wire version that was run in the Washington Times: Continue reading “DMR Timesheets raise troubling questions regarding contract worker payment and supervision (Updated)”

DMR State Pleas and Trudy Fisher dominate the news here on the coast

DMR because yesterday 3 former employees pleaded guilty to felonies and Trudy Fisher because of the local rumor mill fueled by at least one OIG report.  We start with Ms. Fisher:

Head of Mississippi environmental agency to resign ~ Jeff Amy

And of course it was Jeff’s story that Anita Lee and I chatted about before we entered the courtroom for the DMR plea hearing before Circuit Court Judge Roger Clark yesterday in Biloxi.  I was disappointed in not being able to use Twitter, especially since still photography was allowed inside the court room per the court’s own rules.  Those rules were written before the rise of social media and it shows.  Nonetheless, when the court’s bailiff comes out two times before the start of the hearing to let everyone else know they better turn off all their electronic devices it behooved those assembled to heed the good word.

Let’s start with Anita’s story for the Sun Herald:

3 former DMR employees plead guilty, sentenced ~ Anita Lee

She does a good job recounting the events of the hearing, where Tina Shumate was clearly the boogie man de jour.  After Larsen’s attorney made some statements regarding how Shumate allegedly treated Larsen when he tried repaying the travel over payment, Shumate’s lawyer Tim Holliman’s reaction upon hearing Team Larsen’s statement tells me her story will beg to differ.  We’ll see.

What Anita’s story does not say is what I am going to cover because it is clear to me that Continue reading “DMR State Pleas and Trudy Fisher dominate the news here on the coast”

Miller Time: The spring PR and Trial seasons are upon us

I had no clue the entirety of the state’s Gross Domestic Product made it into the state’s coffers but after reading Jamie Miller’s latest in the Sun Herald that no clue feeling washed over me several times in a tide of cheap talking points, skillfully packaged as they were:

JAMIE M. MILLER: Time for DMR to focus on its mission

Meantime in other news complete with mugshots:

Trials set in state cases against former DMR employees ~ Anita Lee

Let’s mark our Circuit Court calendars:

  • Leslie Gollott: April 21
  • Grant Larsen: May 12
  • Tina Shumate: May 19
  • Susan Perkins: May 19
  • Kerwin Cuevas: August 4

Here at Slabbed we’re not marking calendars to join any sort of lynch mob no siree. Slabbed is known for making bold predictions and I have one for the outcome of these State Auditor lead investigations, which with one exception focused on mid level employees and stopped way short on the dealings between the Marine Resources Foundation and other Jackson County based nonprofits.

Lets set the morning line, specifically the acquittal over/under of these 5 upcoming cases at 2.5.  I like the over there as I foresee three acquittals though five would not surprise me.

Exactly one thought on the Bill Walker plea

More precisely one thought on the information contained in Anita Lee’s story on same.

Shumate allegedly approached the Land Trust for the Mississippi Coastal Plain about buying the property. The Land Trust and Scott Walker signed a sales contract in April 2011.

Shumate’s attorney, Tim Holleman of Gulfport, who attended the plea hearing, said afterward that Shumate maintains her innocence. He noted that the government alleges Bill Walker “directed” her to approach the Land Trust, not that she conspired with the Walkers. But she is included in the conspiracy charge with the Walkers.

I seem to remember that a conspiracy could involve other acts. Shumate’s purchase of her parent’s property with Coastal Impact funds could be one such possible act the prosecutors would use. The Good Book appears to back this understanding.

It will be interesting to see if Shumate and Ziegler cave or take this into a courtroom.  Both have top notch legal representation.