COUNTY SECRETLY SETTLES HIRAKAWA SEX DISCRIMINATION SUIT FOR $450,000
(PNN) -- PNN has learned that the County of Kaua`i has settled the sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Kristan C. Hirakawa and has paid her $450,000.
According to a reliable source who asked not to be identified, the check has been cut yet there has been no announcement and there is no record of the settlement which was apparently approved by the county council in an executive session at their July 27 meeting.
Hirakawa sued the county for a second time after winning her first suit against the Kaua`i Police Department and being reassigned to the liquor department where she was once again a victim of gender discrimination resulting in the current settlement, as PNN has exclusively reported.
Although settlements are public records according to the Office of Information Practices (OIP) the “recap memo” for the July 27 council meeting shows no settlement vote was taken in open session.
The agenda item, Executive Session (ES) 458, says it was held “for the purposes of deliberating, deciding, and authorizing a proposed settlement in the case of Kristan C. Hirakawa v. County of Kaua`i”.
According to OIP Opinion 89-10 regarding settlement agreements “(o)nce the litigation is concluded...all the settlement agreements must be publicly available.”
However OIP Opinion 03-07 regarding voting in executive meetings says that
Votes taken in executive meetings need not be disclosed to the public because the Sunshine Law allows minutes of executive meetings to be withheld so long as their publication would defeat the lawful purpose of the executive meeting, but no longer. Once disclosure of votes taken in executive meetings does not defeat the lawful purpose of holding an executive meeting, the votes should be disclosed.
A request for clarification was sent yesterday to OIP asking whether a lawsuit settlement vote must be taken in open session with the terms disclosed and, if not, how the public is supposed to know about the settlement. No answer was received by press time.
Also on the July 27 agenda was ES 256 which was held “for the purposes of deliberating, deciding, and authorizing a proposed settlement in the case of Jane Doe v. County of Kaua`i, EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) Charge No. 37-B-2009-00620 and FEPA NO. K-15516”.
There is no record of any settlement of this case although as PNN reported there are multiple EEOC complaints against the county including one by former deputy county attorney Margaret Hanson Sueoka was mistakenly revealed by the county in June of 2009.
EEOC complaints are confidential according to federal law which supersedes the state sunshine law.
Although a source close to council services has told PNN that the Sueoka case has been settled there is no record of the settlement.
According to law, the EEOC must give the go-ahead in order for an employment discrimination suit to be brought in circuit court.
Also outstanding is the case of Kathleen Ah Quin against the county transportation agency which the council apparently voted to fight with an appropriation of money for outside council on June 9.
Follow the links above for details of these lawsuits and complaints.
Showing posts with label Gender bias. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gender bias. Show all posts
Monday, August 23, 2010
Thursday, April 30, 2009
SPOTLESS
SPOTLESS: When it comes to blogs not all are created equal.
Though what we do is no different than the news analysis and op-ed type column we’ve been writing on and off for 25 years- except for the freedom to extend to 12-1500 words from the standard 800 limit that the newspaper “news hole” imposes- we have suddenly morphed into a blogger.
So be it. Although we often run straight PNN news it’s all in one place due to our sketchy ability to manipulate the technology beyond what the “blogger” software provides.
Not so for the oxymoronic “on-line newspaper” where their reporters can file standard stories and also post “blogs”- if they dare
Trouble is few do. Most of the hard news reporters who have tried such as KITV’s Darryl Huff quickly remove themselves from the fray after finding the opportunity to express themselves is countered by the exposure to vagaries of public discourse with readers.
Perhaps the only one who has done it successfully with any consistency is Honolulu Advertiser’s Derrick DePledge.
None can dispute the hard news value of DePledge’s blog posts. They are often the only coverage of some of the most important events of the day that eventually appear in the headlines of the Advertiser and other papers.
And therein lies the pitfall.
What at face value is a value-added feature, at times turns into a dumping ground for important stories that corporate overlording editors either don’t want to see in print or don’t see the importance of so they wind up before a handful of on-line readers instead of the thousands that their print or even regular on-line coverage reaches.
While more and more people turn to independent blogs as a source of news outside corporate control, the corporate press has apparently usurped that independence and actually used it to counter the charge that they are ignoring certain stories by relegating them to blogs like DePledge’s.
One example is the story of State Rep. Joe Bertram’s (D-Makena-Kihei) defense of a man accused of being a child predator after being caught in one of those “Dateline” style entrapments where there is no actual child involved- a police tactic Bertram called an “imaginary crime” invoking images of the Orwellian thought police.
Bertram became the target of whack job Willes Lee head of the Hawai`i Republican Party who started a radio ad and eventually a TV campaign spinning Bertram’s support of constitutional rights as being “pro child molester”.
But aside from a couple of posts here defending Bertram-electing the same accusations against us- the story was the chief province of DePledge’s blog with a couple of posts on the story as it evolved.
No one but those who perused DePledge’s “Notebook” would have known anything about the story until today when, not DePledge or the Advertiser but the Associated Press picked up the story that Lee decided for reasons unknown to “cut it out” and pull the ads, presumably due to outside pressures- an accusation upon which Lee had “no comment” according to AP.
But if that story could be excused from prime time coverage due to some kind of anti “inside baseball” rule editors often use to dismiss reporters’ stories, it has to make us wonder what the editor was thinking when he relegated DePledge’s coverage of the last minute petition campaign to revive HB 444, the civil unions bill.
Even though the activists, pushing the revival and the petition, put on a full court press on the media, the advertiser’s sum total of coverage was in DePledge’s blog and the Advertiser has yet to run a story on the subject, even after a couple of TV news stations finally relented and ran stories on the filing of the 7000-plus name petition.
DePledge has to be commended for hanging in there with his blog especially after episodes like our post the other day wondering, along with a couple of other bloggers- Poinography!’s Doug White and Kauai Eclectic’s Joan Conrow- why the scrupulously “objective” reporter apparently signed the petition
White had his comment asking about it on DePledge’s post deleted- “accidentally” according to DePledge- from the post and Conrow left a comment on our post saying “(b)etter be careful, Derrick. You wouldn't want someone ratting you out to the editors as a political activist.”.
That seeingly refers to the fact that she lost the race for the job as Advertiser Kaua`i Bureau chief after long time reporter Jan TenBruggencate retired last year when, she says, DePledge turned her in to the editor for an alleged lack of “objectivity” in covering the Superferry story for the paper after she expressed her opposition to the project in her blog.
Then when Conrow tried to post a comment on DePledge’s original post she found herself “awaiting moderation” until it was finally posted today
All that that apparently forced DePledge to put on a full court of his own to clear his name and reputation.
Sensing that it didn’t look good DePledge, after unequivocally saying he didn’t sign the petition, went to the source of the email he cited- and posted portions of along with a personalized URL that provided the petition with a “signed Derrick DePledge” at the bottom- and got an explanation for why he received a copy with his name from Alan R. Spector who organized the emailing campaign to the media and supporters.
He wrote to DePledge saying that:
I just verified all the signatures and your name is not on our petition.How did you get the URL that you posted on your Blog?the correct URL should be
http://eqfed.org/campaign/cupetition
You indicated a different URL (below). that one takes you to a page that auto fills out your info.
http://eqfed.org/campaign/cupetition/8wi8esd4h7k3k5kj
I just figured out what happened. You are entered in our database as a media contact only. On April 27, you received an email from us with a link to the petition. It was my understanding that this was going out to just "General Members" and not "media contacts". Don must have goofed when he ran the query. I noticed that it also went out to media in error. That URL is specific to your account. It makes it easy for our members to click on a link, whether it be an action alert, petition, etc, and have everything automatically filled out based on the information we have on file. In your case, just a name, email, and phone number but no address.
No other media we contacted received an email with that “error” and none of our six emails- all in the form of letters urging us to write about the petition, not press releases per se, contained anything but a “blank” form.
It’s no wonder many if not most MSM reporters refuse to blog, especially with the “appearance of impartiality” requirements of the job and the exposure to criticism reporters face if they “blog”.
“Objectivity” and “lack of bias”, while mythical, remains an imperative of the late 20th and early 21st century press. It’s always been exercise is futility and duality when juxtaposed with the first-day journalism school axiom of “news is what we say it is”.
It insults the intelligence of the reader to think that reporters and editors are either something less than human and that people cannot separate opinion from factual reporting even within a single piece or handle a first person style that is at the core of the news analysis of the now half-century of “New Journalism" originated by Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson among others.
No one with a modicum of sense reading this could confuse the opinions in preceding two paragraphs from the factual material reported above it. But somehow it is considered something less than reporting when the reporters expose their preconceptions in order to give readers an accurate prism through which to read the piece rather than try and obfuscate the biases all humans have.
The only ones who complain about the biases of the media are those whose biases are exposed and contradicted by the elements of factual reporting. But as long as the mainstream media insists they are something they can’t be, people like DePledge will come under scrutiny, not necessarily for actual bias but for the contention of the lack thereof.
Though what we do is no different than the news analysis and op-ed type column we’ve been writing on and off for 25 years- except for the freedom to extend to 12-1500 words from the standard 800 limit that the newspaper “news hole” imposes- we have suddenly morphed into a blogger.
So be it. Although we often run straight PNN news it’s all in one place due to our sketchy ability to manipulate the technology beyond what the “blogger” software provides.
Not so for the oxymoronic “on-line newspaper” where their reporters can file standard stories and also post “blogs”- if they dare
Trouble is few do. Most of the hard news reporters who have tried such as KITV’s Darryl Huff quickly remove themselves from the fray after finding the opportunity to express themselves is countered by the exposure to vagaries of public discourse with readers.
Perhaps the only one who has done it successfully with any consistency is Honolulu Advertiser’s Derrick DePledge.
None can dispute the hard news value of DePledge’s blog posts. They are often the only coverage of some of the most important events of the day that eventually appear in the headlines of the Advertiser and other papers.
And therein lies the pitfall.
What at face value is a value-added feature, at times turns into a dumping ground for important stories that corporate overlording editors either don’t want to see in print or don’t see the importance of so they wind up before a handful of on-line readers instead of the thousands that their print or even regular on-line coverage reaches.
While more and more people turn to independent blogs as a source of news outside corporate control, the corporate press has apparently usurped that independence and actually used it to counter the charge that they are ignoring certain stories by relegating them to blogs like DePledge’s.
One example is the story of State Rep. Joe Bertram’s (D-Makena-Kihei) defense of a man accused of being a child predator after being caught in one of those “Dateline” style entrapments where there is no actual child involved- a police tactic Bertram called an “imaginary crime” invoking images of the Orwellian thought police.
Bertram became the target of whack job Willes Lee head of the Hawai`i Republican Party who started a radio ad and eventually a TV campaign spinning Bertram’s support of constitutional rights as being “pro child molester”.
But aside from a couple of posts here defending Bertram-electing the same accusations against us- the story was the chief province of DePledge’s blog with a couple of posts on the story as it evolved.
No one but those who perused DePledge’s “Notebook” would have known anything about the story until today when, not DePledge or the Advertiser but the Associated Press picked up the story that Lee decided for reasons unknown to “cut it out” and pull the ads, presumably due to outside pressures- an accusation upon which Lee had “no comment” according to AP.
But if that story could be excused from prime time coverage due to some kind of anti “inside baseball” rule editors often use to dismiss reporters’ stories, it has to make us wonder what the editor was thinking when he relegated DePledge’s coverage of the last minute petition campaign to revive HB 444, the civil unions bill.
Even though the activists, pushing the revival and the petition, put on a full court press on the media, the advertiser’s sum total of coverage was in DePledge’s blog and the Advertiser has yet to run a story on the subject, even after a couple of TV news stations finally relented and ran stories on the filing of the 7000-plus name petition.
DePledge has to be commended for hanging in there with his blog especially after episodes like our post the other day wondering, along with a couple of other bloggers- Poinography!’s Doug White and Kauai Eclectic’s Joan Conrow- why the scrupulously “objective” reporter apparently signed the petition
White had his comment asking about it on DePledge’s post deleted- “accidentally” according to DePledge- from the post and Conrow left a comment on our post saying “(b)etter be careful, Derrick. You wouldn't want someone ratting you out to the editors as a political activist.”.
That seeingly refers to the fact that she lost the race for the job as Advertiser Kaua`i Bureau chief after long time reporter Jan TenBruggencate retired last year when, she says, DePledge turned her in to the editor for an alleged lack of “objectivity” in covering the Superferry story for the paper after she expressed her opposition to the project in her blog.
Then when Conrow tried to post a comment on DePledge’s original post she found herself “awaiting moderation” until it was finally posted today
All that that apparently forced DePledge to put on a full court of his own to clear his name and reputation.
Sensing that it didn’t look good DePledge, after unequivocally saying he didn’t sign the petition, went to the source of the email he cited- and posted portions of along with a personalized URL that provided the petition with a “signed Derrick DePledge” at the bottom- and got an explanation for why he received a copy with his name from Alan R. Spector who organized the emailing campaign to the media and supporters.
He wrote to DePledge saying that:
I just verified all the signatures and your name is not on our petition.How did you get the URL that you posted on your Blog?the correct URL should be
http://eqfed.org/campaign/cupetition
You indicated a different URL (below). that one takes you to a page that auto fills out your info.
http://eqfed.org/campaign/cupetition/8wi8esd4h7k3k5kj
I just figured out what happened. You are entered in our database as a media contact only. On April 27, you received an email from us with a link to the petition. It was my understanding that this was going out to just "General Members" and not "media contacts". Don must have goofed when he ran the query. I noticed that it also went out to media in error. That URL is specific to your account. It makes it easy for our members to click on a link, whether it be an action alert, petition, etc, and have everything automatically filled out based on the information we have on file. In your case, just a name, email, and phone number but no address.
No other media we contacted received an email with that “error” and none of our six emails- all in the form of letters urging us to write about the petition, not press releases per se, contained anything but a “blank” form.
It’s no wonder many if not most MSM reporters refuse to blog, especially with the “appearance of impartiality” requirements of the job and the exposure to criticism reporters face if they “blog”.
“Objectivity” and “lack of bias”, while mythical, remains an imperative of the late 20th and early 21st century press. It’s always been exercise is futility and duality when juxtaposed with the first-day journalism school axiom of “news is what we say it is”.
It insults the intelligence of the reader to think that reporters and editors are either something less than human and that people cannot separate opinion from factual reporting even within a single piece or handle a first person style that is at the core of the news analysis of the now half-century of “New Journalism" originated by Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson among others.
No one with a modicum of sense reading this could confuse the opinions in preceding two paragraphs from the factual material reported above it. But somehow it is considered something less than reporting when the reporters expose their preconceptions in order to give readers an accurate prism through which to read the piece rather than try and obfuscate the biases all humans have.
The only ones who complain about the biases of the media are those whose biases are exposed and contradicted by the elements of factual reporting. But as long as the mainstream media insists they are something they can’t be, people like DePledge will come under scrutiny, not necessarily for actual bias but for the contention of the lack thereof.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
SNIFFING IT OUT
SNIFFING IT OUT: The publication of Anthony Sommer’s book KPD Blue has lifted the veil on racial bias if not systemic racism in Kaua`i county government.
But arguments over the role that race has in hiring and the daily provision of services in not just the police department but all county departments has almost overshadowed also pervasive gender bias.
A recently filed lawsuit has refocused attention in what appears to be not just a blatant case of gender bias but the lackadaisical response by the county to the complaints which led to the lawsuit being filed.
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.
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 lawsuit- Kathleen M. Ah Quin vs. County of Kaua`i Department of Transportation et. al.- was filed November 10 in Federal District Court, Civil # C V 080057 and demands a jury trial.
But arguments over the role that race has in hiring and the daily provision of services in not just the police department but all county departments has almost overshadowed also pervasive gender bias.
A recently filed lawsuit has refocused attention in what appears to be not just a blatant case of gender bias but the lackadaisical response by the county to the complaints which led to the lawsuit being filed.
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.
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 lawsuit- Kathleen M. Ah Quin vs. County of Kaua`i Department of Transportation et. al.- was filed November 10 in Federal District Court, Civil # C V 080057 and demands a jury trial.
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