FORT PIERCE \u2013 The employment status of Fort Pierce City Attorney Sara Hedges could be in the hands of city commissioners May 18.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know there is a move afoot to remove Sara Hedges as city attorney,\u201d Commissioner Michael Broderick said during Monday morning\u2019s Fort Pierce City Commission business meeting. \u201cI don\u2019t support that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Members renewed their conversation of the controversy involving Hedges\u2019 recent recommendation that city Finance Director Johnna Morris be fired after the city received a court-ordered wage garnishment order that it take money from Morris\u2019 bi-monthly pay to satisfy a $14,343.61 unpaid personal credit card debt.<\/p>\n
Some officials have said federal law prohibits an employer from taking disciplinary action against an employee after a single garnishment, and city officials have not publicly identified any other disciplinary circumstances involving Morris.<\/p>\n
Hedges initially placed the finance director on paid administrative leave.<\/p>\n
City Manager Richard Chess, who, like Hedges, is a charter employee who answers only to the city commission, claimed Hedges had blocked him from seeking outside employment counsel when the garnishment issue first arose.<\/p>\n
Morris returned to work after three days, but an attorney representing her is asking $200,000 in damages from the city, plus that Hedges be fired for additional claims that Hedges violated Morris\u2019 privacy rights by disclosing the long-time finance director\u2019s personal financial information and damaged her reputation.<\/p>\n
In an April 28 letter to the city, West Palm Beach attorney Denise Mutamba also asked the city to respond to Morris\u2019 demands by May 4, including offering a public apology from the city and purging Morris\u2019 personnel record of the matter.<\/p>\n
Despite the May 4 deadline, the issue was not on the city commission\u2019s formal day-meeting agenda Monday. It arose after Commissioner Chris Dzadovsky questioned when members planned to discuss renewing some contracts\u2013including Hedges\u2019– that will renew automatically June 2 unless there\u2019s other action by the commission.<\/p>\n
Dzadovsky lacked support for additional discussion Monday. But commissioners voted 4-1 supporting Dzadovsky\u2019s motion to discuss on May 18 officially renewing, not renewing or taking no action and allowing Hedges\u2019 contract to automatically continue. Mayor Linda Hudson cast the dissenting vote.<\/p>\n
Hedges had a disciplinary complaint filed against her in 2023, when she was assistant city attorney. A city code enforcement officer said she referred to him using a derogatory term during a meeting that included other city employees .<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear if any disciplinary action resulted.<\/p>\n
St. Lucie County court records show this is the first time a garnishment order has been filed against Morris with the city to collect an unpaid debt. In 2025, court records show two other credit card collection orders were cleared without garnishment against the finance director who earns $180,000 annually.<\/p>\n
Felicia Holloman, assistant city attorney, was at Monday\u2019s commission meeting from the city\u2019s legal office. Hedges was reported to be out of town this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT PIERCE \u2013 The employment status of Fort Pierce City Attorney Sara Hedges could be in the hands…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172,563],"class_list":["post-267185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news","tag-st_lucie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}