Vernice Gumbs has appealed her termination as executive director of the V.I. Taxicab Commission, alleging in a court filing that the board that governs the agency did not have a quorum when it voted on her removal, among other claims.
According to the complaint filed Friday in V.I. Superior Court, Gumbs was fired Feb. 20 via a letter from commission chairperson Elizabeth Hansen-Wattley, who is the sole defendant named in the suit.
The letter cited “continued insubordination” as the reason for firing Gumbs, who was appointed to the position in September 2022 and is represented in her complaint by Peter J. Lynch of Fuller & Lynch Advocacy Group, PLLC.
However, Gumbs alleges that there is no record that she was ever insubordinate, and that the commission did not have a quorum when it met to decide her fate because one of the five members present was not qualified to sit on the board in the first place.
By law, the Taxicab Commission must consist of nine members, including: three taxi medallion holders, one each from St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix; three members of the public, with one from each island; one retired person with a background in law enforcement or the legal profession; one Tourism Department employee and one employee from the Department of Licensing and Consumer Affairs. Five members are required for a quorum.
While five members were present when the board met to consider Gumbs’ firing, one of them, Franklin Brathwaite, was not qualified to be on the commission because he has never held a taxi medallion, according to the complaint.
Additionally, at the time the decision was made, three of the commission positions were vacant, and Gumbs and members Vincent Georges and Loretta Lloyd “were not present because they were never notified of the meeting,” it says.
As a result of the absences and vacancies, and the unqualified individual, the commission made its decision to terminate Gumbs when it had only four bona fide members present, the complaint states. They included Sweeny Toussaint Jr. and Julian Penn, taxi medallion holders on St. Croix and St. Thomas, respectively; Hansen-Wattley, assistant commissioner of Tourism who lives on St. Croix; and Myrna George, deputy commissioner of the DLCA and a resident of St. John.
Gumbs is seeking a declaratory judgment that her termination was unlawful, an injunction “prohibiting the effectuation” of her termination, or ordering its reversal if it was effectuated, with the restoration of back pay and withdrawn entitlements since Feb. 20.
Hansen-Wattley had not responded to the complaint as of Monday, and Judge Denise M. Francois had not ruled on Gumbs’ requests.
