City receives list of claimants
Justice hands over names of those it feels were discriminated against

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — City staff can finally begin vetting more than seven years' worth of employee discrimination claims from local American Indians and the U.S. Department of Justice.

After months of delays, the Justice Department finally handed in the names of the American Indians it believes the city denied employment or, at the least, delayed their hire between Jan. 1, 1997, and Oct. 28, 2004, because of their race.

The list is the latest step a legal settlement the City Council approved Sept. 28, 2004. Instead of taking its chances fighting the discrimination claims in court, the council agreed to set aside $300,000 to pay out the claims the Justice Department which sued the city on behalf of an anonymous group of American Indians could make legitimate cases for.

The list took some time in coming.

By the letter of the settlement the council signed with the Justice Department, the federal government should have had those names to the city by mid-July. Claiming its staff was overwhelmed by the many claims that came in, the feds asked for an extension, twice. On both occasions, the city raised no objections.

Now that the list has arrived, what does the city have to contend with?

According to City Attorney George Kozeliski, the list contains exactly 30 claims.

For a more than seven-year stretch, he said, "it's not that bad."

Although the feds haven't yet revealed the price tag on those claims, Justice Department staff, according to Kozeliski, said they should exhaust the full $300,000 the city set aside for the settlement. He said the exact figure would arrive today.

Also on the way is the number of claimants the Justice Department is asking the city to hire into vacant positions with retroactive seniority and benefits. The settlement gives the Justice Department room to request 27 such priority hires. Kozeliski did not yet know exactly how many the department was asking for, but said there would be at least one. However many were requested, he said none would be granted at the expense of any current city employee.

While waiting for those details, Kozeliski did have some other figures on hand.

Of the 30 claims the Justice Department was making, he said, three stem from 1997, two from 1999, four from 2000, five from 2001, seven from 2002, six from 2003, and three from 2004. They span nine separate city departments and stretch all the way from entry level positions to department directorships.

The city does not have to pay out each claim without a fight. It can challenge any one in the Federal District Court of New Mexico. Kozeliski now has 45 days to review each claim and decide which, if any, it should challenge.

"We just have to go through them, and go through our personnel files, and see which ones we don't agree with," he said.

That's easier said than done.

It was the scarcity of those very files that helped convince the council to settle with the Justice Department in the first place rather than fight the lawsuit in court outright.

Officials said the city had destroyed most of it's employment records prior to 1999, and what records it kept up to 2001 were spotty. Before the council voted to settle, Kozeliski said he felt confident the city could potentially challenge some of the claims from 2001 on, but not earlier.

It their defense, city officials have pointed to records indicating that American Indians now account for a larger proportion of the city's work force than they do of the city's population.

But the Justice Department's case, Kozeliski said earlier, rested on two main points: that past city administrators had made racist comments, and that American Indians have made up a much smaller proportion of those hired for city jobs than the proportion of American Indians who've applied. As the Justice Department's logic goes, the ethnic makeup of a work force should, over time, come to roughly reflect the ethnic makeup of the applicant pool.

City Manager Eric Honeyfield conceded that the city had fallen short on that count, and that American Indians, while making up a fair share of lower level employees, were still poorly represented in the city's upper echelons.

But what the Justice Department did not consider, or did not care to consider, city officials have said, was how many of those American Indian applicants were qualified for the jobs they were pursuing.

In any case, Kozeliski does not regret his recommendation that the City Council settle with the Justice Department.

"I feel pretty certain that we probably saved quite a bit of money than had we gone ahead and contested this thing," he said.

But by agreeing to cap the city's payout at $300,000, after being talked down from $500,000, the Justice Department also capped the reimbursement of its American Indian clients.

The city settled a similar lawsuit in 1986 for $700,000.