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Commission admits computer-use exhibits in Omar Barbarella discharge appeal; hearing continued to Friday
Summary
The Board admitted multiple computer-history exhibits the department says were taken from an employee’s city-assigned computer. Appellant Omar Barbarella objected to the exhibits’ time specificity; the commission admitted the summaries and scheduled the merits hearing for Friday at 9:30 a.m.
The Board of City Service Commissioners on March 10 admitted several computer-usage exhibits the Department of Compliance and Engagement says were derived from a city computer assigned to employee Omar Barbarella and set the discharge appeal to resume Friday at 9:30 a.m. President Frank Bach said the summary exhibit would be admitted after department witnesses tied the data to Barbarella’s machine.
Mary Reid, the department’s director of compliance and engagement, testified under oath that she prepared the summary exhibit DU14 and that the summary was taken from the raw browser-history file DU3 provided by the city’s ITMD. “I prepared that box, and I prepared the entirety of DU14,” Reid said. Roberto Serita, information services manager in ITMD, testified that DU14 is a summary of data drawn from the history files for the city browser and that the data covered Oct. 10, 2025 through Jan. 2, 2026 on a single computer assigned to Barbarella. Serita said, “I provided the information for DU14.”
Appellant Omar Barbarella objected to the sample-week summary and to the lack of specific timestamps, saying the exhibits do not show whether pages were merely open or actively used and therefore could mischaracterize his work time. “I would like to see specifics of the times that it’s been used,” Barbarella said. President Bach acknowledged the objection but ruled the summary admissible as record evidence: “On that basis, I’m going to admit it into the record.”
The board admitted the department’s demonstrative and screenshot exhibits as follows: DU14 admitted as D16; DU1 (YouTube screenshots) as D17; DU6 (Facebook images) as D18; DU7 as D19; DU9 as D20; and DU10 (job-search screenshots) as D21. The commission declined to formally admit DU3 (the voluminous raw browser-history file) as an exhibit but allowed the department to rely on DU3 as the raw source for summaries and to reference it in testimony. The parties agreed that emails and additional unstipulated items will be addressed at the continued hearing on Friday.
The admissions secure the department’s evidence that nonwork browsing and specific link counts appeared in department-generated reports; the appellant will have the opportunity to contest interpretation and provenance in the scheduled continuation. The commission adjourned the meeting and directed the parties to return Friday at 09:30 a.m. for the next session on the appeal.
