A whistleblower's employee file does little to satisfy questions surrounding his termination, his attorney says.

But it does show that Todd Flanagan, who was fired from the state workers' compensation agency in early December, had some problems with anger and insubordination early in his career.

The personnel file of Flanagan, formerly a member of the Workforce Safety and Insurance special investigations unit, contains notes of instances in 2006 and early 2007 when he entered into yelling matches or verbal disagreements with co-workers. One note says he was kicked out of a meeting for getting angry.

But those problems seemed to have been resolved months before he was terminated; in fact, although the file clearly details all issues regarding the employee's actions, including interoffice e-mails, notes about agency gossip and detailed lists of goals, it does not detail anything surrounding his termination.

"What Ilook at is, with lots of employees, there are issues that get documented,"said Mike Geiermann, Flanagan's attorney. "What Ilook at is timing. The major complaints against Flanagan took place months or years ago."

In fact, the last documented instance was an April 4 verbal warning about insubordination in the workplace, when Flanagan participated in conversations that might have undermined his boss's authority.

Flanagan filed for whistleblower protection in November for his part in an investigation that resulted in felony charges filed against his boss, Romi Leingang, and the executive director, Sandy Blunt. The charges were later dismissed.

Flanagan was fired and escorted out of the building on Dec. 5; the agency did not give a clear explanation of his termination, although a WSI investigation into charges he made in his whistleblower request determined Flanagan lacked credibility and made reckless allegations. The investigation was completed by WSIattorneys shortly before Flanagan was fired.

The day after he was fired, the board of directors voted to terminate Blunt's employment at the urging of the governor.

Flanagan is one of five employees at WSI who have filed for whistleblower protection, the name given to a section of the state's Public Employees Relations Act that shields workers from being fired for reporting certain job-related violations.

Since his termination, the governor's office has asked for a clear explanation as to why Flanagan was fired, and the North Dakota Highway Patrol initiated an investigation into whether WSI is illegally retaliating against whistleblowers.

The agency has since said that he was not fired in retaliation, and John Halvorson, interim CEO, said Monday that it's the agency's policy not to discuss human resources issues, when asked if it's typical for there to be no record for reasons of termination in an employee file.

"When it comes to the ultimate event of firing him, there's nothing,"Geiermann said. "There's no complaint. There's no meeting, there's no time, place or date of when he did something wrong."

The file does contain several e-mails and notes by Leingang detailing instances when Flanagan was reprimanded or advised of his behavior, including an instance when he became verbally upset in the middle of a meeting and was asked to leave. He was later advised to apologize to at least nine different people.

Notes in the file also detail an occasion when Flanagan entered into a verbal altercation with another employee, Kelvin Zimmer; the two were advised to attend a "Managing Emotions Under Conflict"seminar.

Zimmer had put in his resignation sometime in late November but asked that the resignation be reconsidered after Flanagan was fired, according to Leingang's notes in the employee file.

The file contained a note by Leingang detailing a conversation with Zimmer the day after Flanagan was fired; according to the notes, Zimmer said the reason he wanted to stay was due to "what happened yesterday."

"I'll be honest with you, from the first day (Flanagan) got here things have not been the same,"Leingang quoted Zimmer in something she wrote for Flanagan's file.

Both Zimmer and Leingang decided that it would be best for Zimmer to continue with his plans to work at the Department of Transportation. Zimmer declined to comment further when contacted by the Tribune on Monday.

But other notes in his file and on his reviews indicated that Flanagan was well-liked and reliable, with the potential to be one of the agency's best investigators.

There were several notes in the file about employees throughout the agency who liked working with him.

And his reviews were consistently around 3.0 out of a maximum of 5.0.

"His personnel file and his recent evaluations will indicate that he was a good employee,"Geiermann said. "That's our whole point, that there simply wasn't any basis to terminate him except he filed whistleblower against Blunt and Leingang."

(Reach reporter Crystal Reid at 250-8261 or crystal.reid@;bismarcktribune .com)