LITTLE ROCK — For the second time in a year, the Metropolitan Housing Alliance Board of Commissioners has directed a private attorney to investigate allegations of inappropriate conduct by its top staff and a board member.
Earlier this month, the board agreed to direct the Mays, Byrd & Associates law firm to finish an investigation into an employee’s accusations that alliance Executive Director Shelly Ehenger engaged in bad hiring practices including nepotism, falsifying application materials, and ignoring or hiding bad references on applications.
The firm has been on retainer with the agency since August because of an investigation that involved allegations of gender and race based discrimination against a board member.
Attorney invoices, meeting minutes and a report on the discrimination investigation delivered in October by the law firm were obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette through Freedom of Information Act requests. The documents portray internal conflict ranging from power struggles between staff and board members to accusations of intimidation and favoritism.
Interviews in the report add to the picture of discontent that was painted in a recent employee e-mail complaint that led to Ehenger’s suspension with pay on May 3 and the opening of the current investigation.
The alliance provides housing assistance to 8,000 Little Rock residents through various programs, including more than 2,000 Section 8 vouchers from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development, 670 traditional public-housing units and more than 150 apartments in mixed-income housing facilities.
The e-mail complaint against Ehenger was filed by Kim Travis, director of administrative services, on May 1, after Ehenger had suspended her over the content of an email Travis had sent earlier in the day.
In the e-mail complaint, Travis accused Ehenger of hiring relatives and friends of other employees; of ignoring or hiding bad references and past firings on applications for employment; and of falsifying training documents.
The e-mail that led Ehenger to suspend Travis included personal attacks. The agency released no further details of Travis’ suspension.
Both Ehenger and Travis were still suspended with pay as of Friday. Earlier this month, board members said that they had not set a deadline for completion of the investigation.
THE PARTICULARS
The alliance’s relationship with Mays, Byrd & Associates law firm began in 2011 after Ehenger filed a complaint against board member Brad Walker, alleging racial and sex discrimination. The complaint also said Walker violated the agency’s policy against violence in the workplace.
Ehenger did not return several e-mails or calls for comment sent to her personal email and cell phone.
Ehenger filed the complaint after the Feb. 23, 2011, board meeting. The first incident in Ehenger’s complaint happened before the meeting when an alliance employee mentioned that she saw dogs in Walker’s work office when she delivered the board packet to him. He responded with a comment that compared the dogs to women, according to dozens of witness statements and Walker’s admission to investigators that the comment was inappropriate.
The second incident happened during the meeting when Ehenger and Walker disagreed about the rules for hiring consultants and whether the board had to be consulted once the cost reached $20,000 or more. As the disagreement heightened, a tape recording of the meeting reveals Walker mumbling and then three loud slamming noises.
Witnesses said the noises were Walker’s binder hitting the table, his chair being pushed against the table and the door slamming as he left.
The law firm’s final discrimination investigation report said there was not enough evidence to establish a pattern of a hostile work environment. It also said Walker had violated the agency’s workplace violence policies but that it was unclear whether those policies applied to board members.
The report reads: “While Special Counsel finds that Mr. Walker’s behavior was unprofessional and inappropriate at the Feb. 23, 2011 board meeting, such conduct does not support a claim of sex-based or racially hostile work environment ... Special Counsel finds that there has been only one (possibly two) credible incident to support Ms. Ehenger’s allegation of gender-bias.”
Last week, Walker said that he did not want to comment on either investigation.
According to minutes from a meeting on Oct. 25, 2011, board members - including Walker - went into an executive session to hear the report. The members emerged from executive session and said the investigation was concluded and they were taking no action.
“The results of the report were there were no findings in terms of the discrimination or harassment allegations,” board Chairman Richard Stephens said in an interview last week. “There is that clause in the personnel policy against workplace violence, but as it applies to employees not to commissioners, we took no action.”
The regional HUD office in Fort Worth provides program oversight for the alliance, which receives the bulk of its funding from HUD. Patricia Campbell, a HUD spokesman, said the HUD office could not comment on the investigation because it has no control over personnel matters, which are a local issue.
Both the discrimination investigation and the current allegations against Ehenger have raised other personnel concerns. During the discrimination investigation, Ehenger and Walker gave statements about those concerns.
The final report on the discrimination investigation included a 31-point summary of incidents and accusations from Ehenger that included two accusations that she felt personally threatened, six “perceived instances” when she felt Walker took purposeful opposition to staff, and 19 examples when Ehenger felt that Walker was threatening her job or insulting her performance through intimidation and other methods.
For example, the report reads: “A few staff members have complained to Walker. [Ehenger] indicated that one staff person told her, ‘That’s okay, I can always go to Brad.’ ... She believes that staff members who complained to Mr. Walker gave Mr. Walker cover to push to get rid of her.”
Walker also aired some grievances during his interview with the investigators.
“Mr. Walker relates that one of his main concerns has been that the Housing Authority was not hiring the best qualified personnel and that there had been a lot of turnover in the finance and real estate divisions,” the report read. “He believed that employees were not being empowered to do their jobs at the Housing Authority. He states that employees came to Board members with their personnel complaints.”
Walker goes on to say the alliance is a “disfunctional structure and that the executive director has most of the authority,” and that Ehenger is resistant to the board’s input and to him in particular.
MINUTES TRAIL
Several procedural problems in the discrimination investigation take shape in meeting minutes, meeting recordings and invoices submitted to the alliance by the Wright, Lindsey & Jennings law firm, the alliance’s regular legal counsel that provides advice on day-to-day matters.
The Wright firm’s invoices from May 11 and May 16, 2011, listed three teleconferences with Walker, one of which was listed as “re: guidance from personnel policy and procedure for investigation of complaint of employment discrimination by executive director.”
Attorney Ed Armstrong-Rial said Thursday that the teleconference calls were initiated by Walker, who sought advice about participating in board matters during the discrimination investigation because the complaints were filed against him.
“He had asked whether he was required to abstain from meetings,” Armstrong-Rial said. “He was told there was nothing requiring him to abstain and that he should exercise his discretion in the matter.”
According to meeting minutes, Walker participated in several executive sessions on March 4, April 27, May 23 and Oct. 25, 2011, when the board discussed the complaint and the procedure for hiring the private law firm to conduct the discrimination investigation.
Walker was absent from the July 14, July 19 and July 25, 2011, meetings when the board decided the criteria to hire an outside law firm, interviewed candidates and voted to hire Mays, Byrd & Associates, according to meeting minutes.
In the March 4, 2011, meeting, the board went into executive session to discuss the procurement policy for hiring the outside attorney. According to the minutes, the board - including Walker - voted to issue a request for qualifications to start the hiring process.
According to the minutes from the April 27, 2011, meeting, the board - including Walker - went into executive session to discuss personnel issues. When it reconvened in open session, Chairman Stephens announced that the board had decided in executive session to approve the notice for the request for qualifications that would be published to hire the private attorney to investigate. No formal public vote was taken to approve the notice, as required by the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.
Walker and the rest of the board went into executive session on May 23, 2011, and when they returned to open session, Stephens said they had decided in executive session to reissue the advertisement to seek additional applicants. Again, there was no formal vote taken in open session.
Stephens said Walker did not attend the board meeting on May 3 when the board voted to suspend Ehenger with pay, and abstained from the vote to direct Mays, Byrd & Associates to investigate the May 1 claims against Ehenger.
“Commissioner Walker did not participate in the selection of independent counsel. The evaluation of the candidates was done by [the other commissioners] in meetings open to the public,” said Armstrong-Rial. “Given the lengths that the commissioners went to in order to secure qualified and independent counsel so that the executive director’s complaint could be fully and fairly investigated, any suggestion that Commissioner Walker did something unethical in supporting the Board’s decision to hire independent counsel is baseless.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/29/2012