This whistleblower lawsuit involves horse manure, a backhoe and videotape.

Lee Hillier filed suit in Broward Circuit Court this week against the Plantation Acres Improvement District over losing his job.

The district hired Hillier, a former Plantation city councilman, to be its $48,000-a-year manager in October 2004. The state-chartered agency principally deals with water management issues within the neighborhood’s 2,065 acres.

Hillier’s lawsuit states that in August, he complained to Jim Davis, an elected supervisor on the district’s board, that Davis had installed a rainwater drain pipe on his farm that allowed horse manure to seep into a district canal.

Hillier repeated his complaint to the South Florida Water Management District on Dec. 2.

He said he complained again when he saw Doug Holt, who had sold a backhoe to the district, using the backhoe to do work on Davis’ property, which the suit says “Hillier suspected was gross mismanagement … and gross waste of public funds.”

On Dec. 14, Hillier videotaped Davis and another district board supervisor, Ron Adams, violating a policy by taking a federal contract out of the office, according to the suit. He followed up by filing a police report.

Hillier was terminated at a Jan. 12 emergency meeting; he says without cause. He said the motion to fire him was not on the agenda, which he charges is a violation of the state’s Sunshine Law. He also complained to the attorney general, the state Elections Commission and the Department of Environmental Protection.

“I was going to let bygones be bygones, but I didn’t want to let them get away with it,” Hillier said. “Lee is firing back. I am standing up for my rights.”

Davis, who denies the allegations, said Hillier was fired “because of his incompetence … his vulgarity, his language, the way he talks to people, his antagonistic ways. Our district engineer told him, ‘You’re incompetent, you’re in over your head and you should resign.'”

Hillier was a council member from 1997 to 2001, when Diane Veltri Bendekovic defeated him. He has sued before. In 2002, he sued the city, accusing Mayor Rae Carole Armstrong’s staff of violating the state’s open records law. He lost the case but is appealing.

In 1999, he sued Van Hibberts, the man he defeated in 1997, over a fight he says took place the night before the election that he said left him with chronic aching and herniated discs in his neck and a shoulder requiring surgery. Hillier lost that suit.

Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at or 954-572-2008.