COLUMN ONE : Tenacious Texan’s Crusade : A whistle-blower is battling to claim the millions he won after the state abruptly fired him in 1989. So far, the Legislature has done all it can to thwart his efforts.

The hypocrisy of it all, that’s what really burns George Green.

A clock-punching, tax-paying, straight-and-narrow kind of Texan, he’s been given a nasty little civics lesson by his beloved Lone Star State: The government that makes the rules doesn’t always play by them, especially when its own power is at stake.

An architect by trade, Green was a valued employee of the Department of Human Services, at least until he began accusing the agency of cutting corners and taking kickbacks on its construction jobs. When he threatened to go public with his allegations in 1989, he was fired--and then indicted--on charges of making a 13-cent personal call from his office phone.

Broke and depressed, Green found his salvation in the Texas Whistleblower Act, which bars the state from retaliating against employees for reporting misdeeds. He sued and, in 1991, won $13.6 million, the largest judgment in the 12-year history of the law. If the award seemed generous, the jury said, it was to shame the government for maligning an honest man, a conscientious bureaucrat who tried to save the taxpayers many more millions than he ever will receive.

But the stewards of the state, the same folks who deemed whistle-blowers worthy of protection in the first place, have decided they don’t want to eat quite that much crow. Even though every court in Texas has upheld the judgment, lawmakers in Austin act as though they wish Green would just go away. Interest has been compounding at the rate of about $5,000 a day--the tab hit $20 million last month--yet there’s still not so much as a check in the mail.

“There’s something fundamentally wrong here,” said Green, 47, a chunky, silver-haired bachelor who remains unemployed and, he fears, unemployable. “The way I’ve been treated as a citizen, there’s no way on Earth I’m going to let these scoundrels off the hook.”

To this day, he is the only state employee to be punished as a result of his original allegations, which the Department of Human Services still insists are unfounded.

Overmatched and outgunned, Green has resorted to playing the fly in Texas’ ointment. With almost vexatious glee, he has begun attaching liens to state property in at least seven counties, including the site of the now-defunct superconducting super collider project on the Waxahachie prairie. The attorney general’s office has sued to block Green, but it remains unclear whether his claims still could in terfere with prospective sales.

The Legislature, meanwhile, grew so apoplectic over his escalating award that it decided to revamp--some might say emasculate--the measure it created in 1983 to encourage workers like Green. Declaring the Whistleblower Act “out of control,” lawmakers voted this year to bar public employees from collecting any punitive damages against the state. They also imposed a $250,000 cap on actual damages, saying it was the only way to discourage the filing of frivolous claims.

“There’s a certain point where compensating the whistle-blower can become punishment for the taxpayers,” said Ron Dusek, a spokesman for Atty. Gen. Dan Morales, who has battled Green for more than five years. “You can’t really punish the state. The state, as an entity, is all of us. You’re just punishing yourself.”

A Moral Crusade

While the details of the debate can degenerate into murky legalese, Green treats his case as if it were a moral crusade, the last stand of an upright citizen against the arrogance of the political Establishment. To be sure, he has a mighty financial incentive for weathering the fight. But a less principled--or more pragmatic--combatant probably could have settled for a few million dollars by now.

Although his lawyers did make some early overtures in that direction, Green now insists on collecting every last penny he is owed. He acknowledges a certain irony in that--he, a putative champion of the taxpayers, is trying to pocket what amounts to a buck from every man, woman and child in the state. But anything less, he argues, would be a public disservice--a concession that would pardon the government for what a jury of his peers so unequivocally condemned.

“I’m doing exactly what justice requires me to do,” Green said. “If I settled for anything less, I’d be an absolute joke of a human being.”

A graduate of the University of Texas, Green was hired in 1983 as the in-house architect for the Department of Human Services, where he reviewed all leases and building contracts to ensure that the agency received what it paid for.

Although his scrupulous work earned him consistently good evaluations, Green soon grew alarmed over what he considered a pattern of corruption in the way contractors allegedly performed substandard work, overcharged the state, then showered officials with gifts. When he shared his misgivings with supervisors, Green said, they not only failed to investigate, but turned the microscope on him.

After scouring more than two years’ worth of records from Green’s office phone, the department found him guilty of one 13-cent call to his father. A second investigation found that he had missed a physical therapy session for a back injury suffered at work--even though Green had called to say that his car brakes had failed. He was fired--then indicted, arrested and jailed on a felony count of falsifying state documents. “This was my life,” said Green, who spent the better part of a day handcuffed and behind bars before making bail. “For them, it was all theater.”

The charge eventually was dropped, although the indictment remains on his record.

When he sued under the Whistleblower Act, lawyers for the state dismissed Green as a malcontent who had abused government rules.

But the jury, which weighed the evidence during a five-week trial in 1991, concluded that Green’s career had been maliciously torpedoed and his reputation stained by a bogus indictment. They awarded him more than $3 million in actual damages, which presumed he would never again recoup his $36,000 annual salary.

Then they set out to devise a punitive judgment that, as jury foreman Richard Fogg put it, would be “the minimum amount of money required to get the state’s attention and say: ‘Never again.’ ” Cognizant that the cost ultimately would be borne by taxpayers like themselves, the jury settled on $10 million, although some members wanted to penalize the state for two or three times that amount.

Pointedly, they subtracted the 13-cent call from the total, arriving at $13,619,831.87.

“Based on the state’s arrogance, its unmitigated arrogance, I would like to see a much larger number now,” said Fogg, a 52-year-old computer technician. “Texas is, at best, a deadbeat dad who doesn’t care what harm he does to his children or citizens.”

Sovereign Immunity

Rather than honor the judgment, the attorney general appealed on grounds of sovereign immunity, which kept the case tied up with lawyers for the next three years. When the Texas Supreme Court finally upheld the award in 1994, the attorney general then told Green he could get paid only if the Legislature appropriated the money. Although Green is challenging that interpretation, he nonetheless spent the first half of 1995 lobbying lawmakers, who meet for just five months every other year.

During the session, he persuaded the state Senate to authorize full payment of his judgment, which was hovering around $19 million at the time. But the state House Appropriations Committee balked, offering him $5.5 million. Unable to reconcile the gap, the Legislature, for the first time in anyone’s memory, was forced to kill its entire claims bill. Not only did Green come out empty-handed, but 171 others trying to collect from the state were stiffed along with him.

“The message coming from our elected officials is clear: We uphold the laws that we pass only as long as we agree with the outcome,” said Suzy Woodford, who heads the Texas chapter of Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog group. “It’s like they think they can outlive George or wear him down until he finally just throws in the towel.”

A Man of Conscience

For anyone who has spent time with Green, the latter scenario seems rather unlikely.

As pugnacious as he is earnest, Green lives alone, hunkered down in a shack--just 7 feet wide by 43 feet long--that he built as a field office for his dream home in the Hill Country outside Austin. The principal residence, which he began building before he lost his job, is now a rotting skeleton.

He lives off the generosity of family and friends. He says he would like to work again, but he believes that he would be considered too disruptive because of his legal skirmishing.

“A great portion of whistle-blowers are moral absolutists, which means they see things in black and white, right and wrong--and they go all the way with it,” said Don Soken, a Maryland social worker who has counseled Green and dozens of other whistle-blowers. “I almost always recommend to people that they not blow the whistle--because of the stress and physical problems that often develop--but it’s like there’s something in their brain that puts truth and honesty ahead of their own health and safety.”

Almost all of Green’s former supervisors at the Department of Human Services remain on the job, many with raises and promotions. The man who headed the department, Ron Lindsey, is now a top policy adviser on welfare issues for Gov. George W. Bush.

If and when Green receives his award, more than half of it will go to lawyers and taxes. With the money that remains, Green says, he hopes to establish a nonprofit foundation to support “people of conscience” throughout the state.

“This is not about me being a millionaire. When I die, I’m not taking it with me. The jury just appointed me to manage that award for a brief time, not at the expense of taxpayers, but on behalf of my fellow Texans.”