City awaits bill from suit over discrimination

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — All city officials can do now is wait for the federal government to send them the bill.

The bill they're waiting for will tell them how much the city owes American Indians claiming they were denied or delayed city employment between Jan. 1, 1997, and Oct. 28, 2004, because of their race.

That's the agreement or consent decree the City Council made with the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division Sept. 28 after an anonymous group of American Indians filed employment discrimination charges with the federal government last fall. The U.S. District Court in Albuquerque approved the agreement which saved the city a court battle one month later.

Besides having to solicit complaints through local media outlets, the city mailed out applications to all American Indians known to have applied for a job with the city during the nearly eight years in question. According to City Attorney George Kozeliski, who's heading up the city's compliance with the agreement that made for 2,721 letters; 849 of which were returned because of incorrect or outdated addresses.

All discrimination claims were due to the federal government Feb. 28.

Although the feds are still waiting for all claims to arrive, it received more than 100 by January, Kozeliski said. Kathleen Toomey, the Justice Department attorney handling the claims, could not be reached for comment.

Once all the claims are in, the feds sift through them, deciding who has a legitimate case against the city and who doesn't. Kozeliski is expecting all that to be worked out by July.

And that's when the bill arrives.

Depending on the particulars of each case, the feds will ask the city to reimburse the claimant by some cash amount, offer him or her the position and rank they would have held had they not been discriminated against, or both.

Whatever the feds decide, the agreement caps the city's payments at $300,000, which Kozeliski said has already been set aside for the purpose. The feds had originally asked for $500,000; the city wanted to pay nothing. They settled on the $300,000 after some back-and-forth negotiation.

The feds may not ask for the full $300,000, and whatever the bill ends up being, it may not be the city's final pay-out. The agreement gives the city a chance to challenge any claim it considers illegitimate in Albuquerque.

But it's up to the city to prove the feds wrong.

"The government gives us a list of people it claims have been discriminated against, so the burden's sort of on us," the city attorney said.

While it's usually up the person making the charge to prove his or her case in individual situations, he said, it's normal for the burden of proof to fall on the city in group cases.

If an American Indian is claiming the city turned him down for a job because of his race and the city ended up hiring another American Indian for the job, for example, Kozeliski said there might me grounds for challenging a claim. He'll have to make those decisions once the feds send him their final list in July.

Kozeliski expects all the claims to be settled a year from now. But it would still be another year-and-a-half until the consent decree expires. The feds will have the right to inspect the city's employment records on demand until October of 2007.

— To contact reporter Zsombor Peter, call 505-863-6811 ext. 217.