BATON ROUGE — A former BREC employee alleges she was fired for refusing to violate company policy.

"I stood on the principle of what was best for BREC," said Tonya Smith, who had been with the parks department for 17 years before she was fired in September. She said she was unjustly terminated by Superintendent Janet Simmons for insubordination.

It started over a contract with uniform company Cintas that was $12,000 over the agreed price. As the administrative services supervisor, it was up to Smith to oversee the payout invoice. Per policy, the BREC commission would need to approve the additional sum.

After months of back and forth with higher-ups, Smith said she was told to bypass the commission and pay the old invoice with new contract funds.

"A day came where they were like, 'We can pay it this way,' and I was like, 'No. That's not policy. That's against purchasing policy. It's also against state purchasing policy, not just BREC purchasing policy.'"

Smith said it's a tactic that is used occasionally; however, she personally has not been forced to do it.

"It has been done before," she said. "I've seen it done before. I've objected to it being done before, all because I know it can come up in audit type of thing, and being there for 17 years, no one wants their department to be flagged for an audit for anything."

BREC, at one point, was four years behind on its audits, and each year has shown significant financial management deficiencies. It is part of what led to the parks department's leadership overhaul this year in the legislature.

Smith said during a conversation with the COO, she was ordered by interim superintendent Janet Simmons to, in her view, violate company policy.

"Our discussion was interrupted by the superintendent, who told me basically it's not up for discussion, that I'll go do it and do it now, and I didn't do it," she said. "At the end of the day, it was against company policy. It was against purchasing policy, and I stood on the principle of standing up for what I felt was right for BREC."

And she would do it again. "And I would give up 17 years again if I had to make that same decision," Smith said.

Smith appealed her termination, but it was upheld by Simmons, which she says is a problem in itself. She filed an ethics complaint and will appear before the BREC Human Resources Complaint Resolution Committee on Thursday.

BREC told WBRZ they cannot comment on personnel matters.