OAK HILL MAYOR ORDERS DRUG TESTS FOR CITY EMPLOYEES

(Oak Hill) - For the first time in the city's history, random drug
testing is being ordered for employees by newly elected Mayor Lorna
Travis.

The previously unannounced directive went to Police Chief Tom Ling
with instructions for both the chief and City Clerk Kim Cherbano to
immediately go for the test Thursday.

Cherbano was working in City Hall alone when she said Ling came in and
instructed her to accompany him for the drug testing at an Edgewater
medical lab.

However, the city clerk had been notified by a pregnant baby-sitter
that her daughter was sick with symptoms of the flu and the
baby-sitter didn't want to be exposed. "I had to go home and couldn't
take the test," Cherbano said later Thursday.

"I don't mind taking a drug test but I was working alone in the office
and was not told by the mayor that city testing was going to start
immediately with supervisors," she said.

Cherbano said Ling told her they were to leave immediately and that a
police department volunteer would answer the phones at City Hall.

Deputy City Clerk Jessie McClain was not in the office Thursday since
she was having medical tests performed at Bert Fish Medical Center.
But when she arrived home, Travis called and asked her to come in
around noon since Cherbano went home to care for her daughter.

Travis is requiring a blood test, rather than the usual routine
urinalysis for drug screening that is used in Oak Hill as part of the
medical qualifications for new police officers.

The mayor was not available for comment since she called for the
testing before leaving for work in Brevard County. But McClain said
the mayor told her she was implementing procedures provided for in the
city employee manual.

Although the primary reason in the handbook for random, unannounced
testing is listed as "suspicion" of drug use, McClain said Travis
clarified she is not ordering the testing for that reason but as a
"routine" fitness-for-duty measure.

The manual allows the mayor, city commission or the city clerk to call
for drug testing and provides for disciplinary action or firing of any
employee who refuses the testing.

Ling also didn't take the test in the morning but said he and two
officers on duty were going for the drug testing later in the afternoon.

"It is a city policy of random testing. It is not a new thing, just
one that has not been done before," Ling said.