A Tennessee lawmaker laid into the chief executive of the state’s prison-labor agency on Thursday, saying she’s been mismanaging the organization for years.

The rebuke came after a former high-ranking employee of Tricor accused its leader of spreading a false rumor about the personal life of the organization’s ousted CFO.

The claims are fallout from a dispute between Tricor and the Department of Correction over a program to supply prison meals.

The two were at odds over how much Tricor,
an independent company set up to employ inmates in Tennessee prisons, should be paid by the system. Tricor believed the prison system had a responsibility to cover its costs when the program ran a deficit.

The two sides have since agreed to end the program.

But the problems went much deeper, says Sid Albert, Tricor’s controller from November 2013 until he was let go last summer. Albert accuses chief executive Patricia Weiland of smearing Tricor’s former chief financial officer.

“Ms. Weiland was mean and sometimes hateful to her employees. Her attempt to assassinate the character of our former CFO by spreading unfounded rumors of her and another state employee is, in my opinion, unconscionable,” Albert told state lawmakers at a hearing.

The rumor appeared to be retaliation for an audit that suggested Tricor had downplayed the dispute over prison meals.

Tricor management denies trying to hide anything, and Weiland says she didn’t spread any rumor.

“Absolutely not,” she told reporters.

Setting aside the rumor, Sen. Ken Yager, R-Kingsport, says the prison-meals dispute was troubling enough. Yager says Tricor should have informed state lawmakers of it, and he says it’s one of many missteps for Weiland.

“The record of mismanagement of Tricor the last few years has completely overshadowed the purpose of Tricor,” said Yager. “I don’t think there was any fraud. I think there was just colossal negligence.”

Tricor’s leader apologized for how events unfolded but said there wasn’t an effort to leave lawmakers in the dark.

“There was never any intent, never any intent, to deceive,” Weiland told legislators. “If it’s perceived by this committee that I misled them, I can only apologize that we were in the midst of the storm.”

She later added that, after 20 years in service, it should be seen as just a “blip on the radar” for Tricor.