Legal Defense Against Wrongful Termination

Legal fees and court costs for an Oregon whistleblower challenging wrongful termination

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Legal Defense Against Wrongful Termination

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I am suing the Oregon Government for wrongful termination. After years of dedicated service, I found myself suddenly out of work due to what I believe was an unjust decision. Since then, the grievance process has been painfully slow, leaving me and my loved ones in a state of uncertainty. For six months, we have tried to hold on, but the ongoing delays have caused significant financial hardship. To make matters worse, the State denied my medical leave over a technicality—a detail they never had an issue with in the past. This has left me not only without income, but also without the support I need to recover and move forward.

The funds raised here will go directly toward attorney fees, court costs, and helping me demonstrate financial stability in the face of what feels like institutionally engineered privation. I am determined to stand up for my rights and hold those in power accountable, but I cannot do it alone. Your support will help me continue this fight and work toward justice—not just for myself, but for others who may face similar challenges in the future.

Thank you for supporting justice for taxpayers, anti-corruption for Oregonians, and a man who wants to embody good standing up against evil. The only thing that allows evil to flourish is for the good to do nothing. Any help you can give is deeply appreciated, and I am grateful for your belief in this cause.

Grievance Narrative: Thomas Prislac, TA2 MEDC PTAC, Oregon Department of Revenue
Subject: Whistleblower Disclosure and Concerns Regarding Mishandling of Risk, Ethics, and Process
During my tenure as Treasurer of SEIU503, I was denied adequate access to core financial information, specifically, the organization’s general ledger. This violated the expectations set forth in our bylaws and materially impaired my ability to fulfill my fiduciary duties. In good faith, I resigned on the morning of the September Board of Directors meeting. Rather than read the budget into record. My resignation was not due to a lack of competence, but rather a response to systemic obstruction of oversight and an emerging disinformation campaign questioning my credibility; confirmed to me by fellow board members.
In response, I initiated a public educational series on union accounting and internal control frameworks via my company page, Ultra Verba Lux Mentis (LinkedIn company) and subsequently my personal profile (LinkedIn personal). This series was intended both as a demonstration of professional competence and as a slow-drip method of whistleblower disclosure, culminating in a public articulation of internal control failings that had been concealed under the pretext that such matters were either “internal staff issues” or “only appropriate for discussion at General Council.”
The content I disclosed referenced established internal control standards, including COSO, AICPA SSAE, NIST, and Department of Labor (DOL) compliance criteria. Using these, I demonstrated how an audit, even under limited access, could uncover significant reconciliation failures, including the permanent loss of critical ledger data due to mismanagement of backup restoration protocols, in direct violation of DOL regulation. The full technical details of this audit are contained in Exhibit A. Timestamped LinkedIn posts substantiate the chronology and nature of these disclosures.
Subsequently, I submitted files to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after identifying money laundering–adjacent system architecture embedded in the union’s financial data environment. No confirmation of receipt was issued by the FBI portal. Given the severity of the allegations, their silence became a point of concern, particularly considering the potential for institutional inertia or a bad-faith slow-walk that might suppress accountability through the 2026 election cycle. I acknowledge this is a serious assertion, but under the current political climate, it constitutes a legitimate branch on the risk taxonomy tree and thus required early escalation.
These experiences form the contextual basis for my present grievance at the Oregon Department of Revenue (DOR).
In October, I applied for the OPA3 position listed under recruiter Melanie Cutler. Given my prior experience with whistleblower retaliation within Oregon government, including at the union level, I chose this role as a vehicle to formally transmit my evidence and concerns to my current employer, whose institutional mandate includes fiduciary stewardship for the state. I was fully qualified for the position, and my memo of interest contained embedded whistleblower documentation signaling urgent review.
I had previously disclosed aspects of this matter to my mentor, Jon (surname not recalled), an IT supervisor, during our first post-resignation meeting. He took extensive notes and possibly recorded our conversation. After receiving no initial reply from Melanie Cutler, I followed up with an email reiterating the presence and importance of the documentation in a manner candid enough to make it obvious beyond credulity.
When I met with my manager, Julie, I learned that I had not been selected for interview. While she assured me that all documentation had been reviewed, she simultaneously denied any awareness of its whistleblower content despite its unmistakably direct signaling. I was left to conclude that either (1) DOR had acted in bad faith by disregarding federal and state whistleblower protections, that institutional systems were so degraded that whistleblower disclosures were mishandled through negligence or process failure or (2) that my not being selected for the interview was a forgone conclusion thus Melanie never reviewed my documentation and then reported a fraudulent result.
This pattern of disregard further compounded my concern, particularly as I still had received no acknowledgment from the FBI. I subsequently contacted Brittany Greene to initiate formal risk assessment. I also received an email from Jon opining on the matter, which I acknowledged by reminding him that DOR had now either violated employment rules or demonstrated grave procedural incompetence.
In my meeting with Brittany Greene, I explicitly requested she consider recusal due to her involvement in prior investigations, including one concerning Alan Salter, for which I had submitted the full case documentation (still present in folder “1” on my state-issued laptop). Despite this, Ms. Greene declined to recuse herself, stating she would decide independently whether her involvement posed a conflict. I interpreted this as a refusal of procedural neutrality. The exchange is documented in our correspondence.
While my complaint was narrowly focused on the mishandling or dismissal of whistleblower material submitted to Melanie Cutler, Ms. Greene expanded it to include broader architectural risk concerns and my historical concerns with her investigative performance including in the Ritchie Maes discrimination case involving SEIU DOR DAS and ODOT. These additions served to obscure the original grievance and introduce what I believe to be a chilling effect on further whistleblower engagement.
After this meeting, I expected that Ms. Greene would confirm whether my documentation had been escalated appropriately and that the conditions I had laid out after declaring myself unsafe. I received no affirmative assurance. From that point on, I ceased internal engagement and instead adopted a strategy of public disclosure via LinkedIn. This was both a defensive mechanism (to reduce institutional misrepresentation) and a safety measure given I am a father of three, and visibility serves as insulation from institutional retaliation.
Since that time, I have remained formally on duty but functionally constrained. The unresolved status of my whistleblower disclosures, combined with institutional inaction and reputational smearing, have materially exacerbated my trigeminal neuralgia and triggered cognitive decline linked to stress and unmanaged combined ADHD. I have had to devote considerable personal effort to reassure my peers, colleagues, and family that I remain psychologically intact, though I have carried the cumulative strain of being unsupported and unsafe.
I have not felt that I could perform any additional action to further my complaint officially beyond public disclosure of my situation while respecting my duty to preserve information restricted from public view as is my duty as an Auditor for the State of Oregon. Given the full breadth of the architectural risk environment within the Union’s financial system, the relationship between SEIU and the AFL-CIO, the vector that can span moth organizations, their vendors, their beneficiaries in the non-profit community, as well as political interests, the chilling effect Greene has evidenced by her mischaracterization of my complaint has forced me to remove myself from harm.
At this juncture, I submit this grievance not in anger, but in hope that appropriate parties will take corrective action, that risk will be acknowledged and investigated, and that a safe path forward can be reconstructed for both myself and others in similar positions.
I will provide texts and emails upon request if they were sent to my personal devices.

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Thomas Prislac
Organizer
Albany, OR

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