THE TITANIC DECK CHAIRS NEVER HAD IT
SO GOOD: The swirling cesspool of sexual harassment that is the
government of County of Kaua`i has made filing lawsuits into a
cottage industry. The state Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(EEOC) probably has it's own little Kaua`i County corner office
that's been kept busy for years.
But one little turd has resurfaced once
again after many though it had permanently sunk to the bottom years
ago.
There it is on this week's
council
agenda-
a
request for $15,000 to fight the case of
Kathleen
M. Ah Quin vs. County of Kaua’i, Department of Transportation, et
al., (Civil No. CVO8-00507 JMS BMK, U.S. District Court).
What
seemed at the time to be just another sexual harassment suit has
turned into a case of protecting one of the most infamous of the
"protected" cronies in Kaua`i government- former
Transportation Agency head and current human resources honcho, Janine
Rapozo.
For
those who missed our still-for-some-reason exclusive
December 2008 report on the details of Ah Quin's suit, Rapozo was
accused of maintaining a pervasive hostile atmosphere in the agency
toward female bus drivers.
In
the interim, of course Rapozo was- and still is as far as the
county auditor's report is concerned- at the center of the
alleged gas theft scandal, having been arrested late last October by
now disgraced and departed Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho, who
herself has cost the county a pretty penny in settlements of EEOC
charges of racial and sexual harassment along with other hostile
workplace violations.
Although
the real culprit in the gas theft case seems to have been Mayor
Bernard Carvalho Jr. according to the auditors report, Rapozo was
selected for indictment but was released from the pokey after it
became apparent the number of grand jury votes to indict her were
somehow miscounted.
How
could that have happened?
In
going back over our 2008 piece on Ah Quin's suit against Rapozo, what
caught out eye before the details were presented was what happened
when the council was asked for $50,000 that November to fight the
suit. At the time, Iseri had just completed a couple of terms on the
council and was Prosecutor-elect, having won the election after
running unopposed.
On
December 8 2008 we wrote:
Bus driver Kathleen M. Ah Quin is
suing the Kaua`i Department of Transpiration- specifically Executive
on Transportation Janine Rapozo- for what appears to be a pervasive
hostile atmosphere in the agency toward women.
Just as appalling as the actual
discrimination is the fact the lawsuit was filed only because a year
went by after Ah Quin’s filing of Hawai`i Civil Rights Commission
(HCRC) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaints
without any attempt by the county to respond or even attempt to
investigate the charges.
At a special council meeting called
at the end of November the County Attorney at the time Matthew Pyun
asked the council for $50,000 to hire an outside attorney to respond
to the suit.
And outgoing councilpersons Shaylene
Iseri Carvalho and Mel Rapozo (no relation) were livid.
“You’ve got to read this”
shrieked Iseri waving a copy of the suit over her head. “The County
Attorney’s office has not engaged in any investigation (for a year)
and now wants to hire an investigator” when there’s only 20 days
to respond.
She told the council that she would
not use taxpayer money without a commitment to investigate complaints
when they are filed, saying she was “disgusted” and how the
situation was “typical of the wasteful spending” of the
administration and specifically the county attorney’s office.
She also questioned why it would
cost $50,000 to respond since the first 20 day response is really a
pro-forma type of thing that should rightfully be done “in-house”
before hiring an outside attorney if it becomes necessary to defend
the suit.
Councilmember Rapozo- who with Iseri
voted against the approval of the funds even after the request was
amended to $20,000- described how no one with the county ever spoke
to any of the employees names in the suit or investigated any of the
incidents.
Apparently
Iseri- predictably?- wasn’t particularly concerned about the
content of the suit itself. But silly us, we thought the public ought
to know what was being alleged against Janine Rapozo- who by the way
is the wife of Mayor Carvalho's current Parks and Recreation
Department Director Lenny Rapozo. L. Rapozo stepped into his job with
no experience at all after his stint as Carvalho's campaign manager.
The
actual content of the suit, which the county is apparently still
contesting despite rumors it had been dismissed, was pretty
disgusting when we presented them in 2008. But the fact that Janine
Rapozo was not only not fired or even reprimanded but rather promoted
to her current Personnel Department post- or actually "Human
Resources" Department after the name was changed recently
without any apparent change in the way the department is run- in
unfathomably repugnant... except of course in the Minotaur’s
labyrinth of Kaua`i County government where it's just standard
operating procedure.
Add
to that what the auditor alleges was her part in the gas "theft"
and it's a case study of corruption in Kaua`i County government.
Back
to our 2008 piece for the full story. As Ah Quin tells it:
The
complaint itself depicts a transportation agency where females were
routinely passed over for full time jobs because, as Ah Quin was told
by another named female employee, Janine Rapozo “doesn’t like
females” after Rapozo had ordered the employee to “keep her door
closed” when she was working as a dispatcher because male drivers
would stop by to talk to her.
That
employee wasn’t the only one to warn Ah Quin. According to the suit
another named female bus driver also told her to watch out for Rapozo
because “likes her males, she does not like females”.
There
are only three female employees in the agency and 17 males according
to the suit.
Despite
11 years of experience and her more than adequate licensing it seems
Ah Quin couldn’t get promoted to a full time position while men
were given the jobs when they opened up.
The
suit describes many incidents where despite the fact that her
qualification surpassed theirs, Rapozo hired or promoted men to full
time positions passing up Ah Quin and other women.
It
also tells how on occasion drivers were brought in from outside the
department and even county government itself to fill the full time
positions in violation of standard county personnel department
policy.
Ah
Quin goes on to list eight males who were promoted over her as well
as other incidents and examples of Rapozo’s gender bias.
When
Ah Quin began to question why, despite a gleaming job performance
evaluation she was passed up for promotion Rapozo started to engage
in a program of retaliation, according to the suit by cutting Ah
Quin’s hours.
Incidents
described include one where passenger complaints was treated
differently when filed against male drivers and another of a
reprimand of Ah Quin for wearing her uniform shirt from another part
time driving job while male employees similarly attired went
unchallenged.
Ah
Quin says she finally asked Rapozo “why don’t you like me. You
never did like me. You keep ignoring me. You ignore me in the office.
I keep asking myself what did I do to you? I know you don’t like
me”.
Rapozo
allegedly replied “because I have had problems with every female
driver that has been hired.”
The
suit also lists incidents where other named female drivers were
harassed in a similar manner as well as misrepresentations by Rapozo
as the fact that there was "no money in the budget” for
expanding hours – a statement followed immediately by ads in the
newspaper soliciting new drivers.
In
another, Rapozo scolded Ah Quin for not picking up a person who was
sitting in a wheelchair in front of the gift shop at Wilcox hospital
which was not a designated bus stop, telling her she should have
stopped the bus, gotten out and asked the person if they wanted to
board the bus.
Ah
Quin responded that there are persons in wheel chairs all over the
place all the time around the hospital and that she was never told to
stop, get out and ask each one if they needed the bus.
Rapozo
has been a long-time, loyal, appointed crony in the past two
administrations and has been shifted around various jobs before
landing in the transportation agency overseeing the Kaua`i Bus.
To
no one’s surprise she was retained in her position by Mayor Bernard
Carvalho when he took office this month without any investigation of
the complaints or lawsuit.
The
council has scheduled an executive session Thursday to discuss the
matter and they are required by law to reveal whether they okayed the
expenditure in open session.