Two of the employees--Ellen Blair, the human resources director, and Mike Tadros, general manager of Underground Utilities--were given luxury box seats to a game at Charleston Southern University in September 2016. Former City Manager Rick Fernandez gave them the tickets.
The city investigation cleared Blair and Tadros of state ethics laws violations for accepting the tickets and for failing to report them on disclosure forms.
Florida mandates some public officials report gifts worth more than $100 and prohibits others from accepting gifts valued at over $100.
"You're asking an employee to investigate his employees," says Ben Wilcox, research director for Integrity Florida. He made his comments speaking at a meeting of the city's Independent Ethics Board in April. "So it appears to me that this report...is more of a whitewash than it is an independent investigation."
Fernandez earlier this year was forced out as city manager after a scandal in which he received box seat tickets from a lobbyist.