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City employee wants job back
By DAVID KARP, Times Staff Writer
TAMPA -- Lynne LaBrake wants her job back at City Hall. The wife of former housing chief Steve LaBrake applied last week to be reinstated to her position in the city's business and community service department, where she once worked for LaBrake, who is now under federal investigation. "We have not made a decision," said Fernando Noriega Jr., the mayor's development administrator. "It's being taken care of from this point on by our attorney." City Attorney James Palermo and other officials said they will review Lynne LaBrake's request to come back to work. "I haven't seen it," Palermo said. Her husband said she should be allowed back like any other city employee who takes unpaid leave. "She is entitled to her job," he said. "She did nothing wrong." Lynne LaBrake, formerly known as Lynne McCarter, took the maximum amount of unpaid leave after she became romantically involved and then pregnant with Steve LaBrake, whom she married last year. Her leave ends after Thursday. Her husband said city policy allows her to regain her job as a senior redevelopment counselor, which pays about $55,000 annually. "There are a few people in the administration ... who have been unfair and have not followed city policy," said Steve LaBrake, who left his $105,000-a-year city position in 2001. The former housing chief is the subject of a state ethics investigation and a grand jury inquiry into the building of a South Tampa home he shared with his wife. Investigators are trying to determine whether improper influence was involved in the financing and construction of the four-bedroom, three-bath house on W Corona Street. Federal authorities also have been investigating Steve LaBrake's dealings with a non-profit group, the Tampa-Hillsborough Action Plan. They want to know if he steered city business to THAP in exchange for THAP officials' doing favors for the couple as they built their house. Steve LaBrake said his wife was fairly promoted from a $6-an-hour clerk to a senior redevelopment counselor. "She was a good employee, who had outstanding evaluations," he said. -- Times staff writer David Karp can be reached at 226-3376 or karp@sptimes.com.
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