According to the state officials, 40 DES employees were offered their jobs back last month. Their reemployment came after hundreds of employees claimed they were wrongfully terminated under former DES director Tim Jeffries.
Jeffries ran the agency from February 2015 until November 2016, when the governor forced him to resign.
Earlier this week, Jeffries told ABC15 he was ousted as part of a "manufactured crisis."
You can watch the entire hour-long interview below.
State officials say all 27 employees are restarting their jobs by the end of January. Three employees declined their offers and ten of them are still in process.
Andy Hall, one of the most outspoken fired DES workers, tells ABC15 he chose to take his state retirement, and he will not go back to his job. Hall worked nine years for the agency and says he was fired over an email making a complaint.
Hall says Jeffries is "deluded" to think that most DES employees were loyal to him. He says many employees at DES worked in fear that Jeffries could "chop people down at a whim."
Hall says he hopes the firings at DES prompt the legislature to restore civil service protections, which would allow state employees to appeal their terminations.
