Another discrimination lawsuit against Framingham

A new lawsuit was filed by Nathalie Jean, our community development coordinator, claims she was racially discriminated against at work. I have seen some of the Finance meetings and will admit, Judy Grove seem to have it in for her. The MWDN has finally got a reporter to dig into something that's news worthy.
You can only see one meeting on demand from Gov TV. The past meetings seem to be archived already. I believe when the lawyers see the meetings, they may agree, Jean was ragged on.
Unfortunately, any past meetings from April 1 back seem to be already archived. I'm sure the lawyers will want to see them all. I have asked Rego where the older meetings are archived.

http://207.172.210.8:5002/CablecastPublicSite/show/1697?channel=1

0 to 11mintes.

Judy Grove, District 8 City Councilor and member of the Finance Subcommittee, told the Daily News that since Framingham transitioned to a city government, the Finance Subcommittee has focused on more aggressive oversight of spending across city government.

“If she thinks this is individual, it is not,” Grove said, adding that the Finance Subcommittee has been hard on departments ranging from the Department of Public Works to the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs Department. “That’s what we do. We don’t sit back and rubber stamp things. It’s across the board. We’re trying to find out where all this money is going.”

They FSC turned a blind eye to the excessive OT in the budget. 

Here's the story from MWDN by Jeannette Hinkle 

Nathalie Jean filed a racial discrimination complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in November 2018, but continued to work until she went on medical leave to cope with ongoing anxiety on Aug. 1

FRAMINGHAM - Last fall, Nathalie Jean awoke to what she thought was a heart attack. Her chest felt constricted, and her heart was beating irregularly.

When the symptoms persisted, Jean stopped at an urgent care clinic along Rte. 9 on her way home from work, a stop she said she made multiple times after suffering what she said were anxiety-related symptoms in the months that followed.

Jean said a doctor told her she was having panic attacks. She said they were caused by stress at her job as a community development coordinator in Framingham’s Division of Community and Economic Development.

Jean, who is black, said the stress stemmed from racial discrimination she faced at work – stress that worsened after going through what she considered aggressive questioning by the Finance Subcommittee during spring budget talks about her work with federal community development block grants.

She filed a racial discrimination complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in November 2018, but continued to work until she went on medical leave to cope with ongoing anxiety on Aug. 1. The Daily News learned of the complaint while researching a story about Framingham’s block grant program.

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She has not yet returned to work but plans to do so.

“The apartheid-like and hostile environment where an entire institution used its full strength of force without any external protection for me from its abuses literally made me sick,” Jean wrote in a statement she released on Tuesday.

City officials vehemently deny Jean’s charge of discrimination, and members of the Finance Subcommittee say their questioning was only an attempt to understand how the block grant funds under Jean’s management were administered. The city typically receives about $500,000 a year in community development block grants.

Mayor Yvonne Spicer said she could not comment on Jean’s leave, but rejected Jean’s claim that she faced discrimination as a city employee.

“I’m speaking to you as an African-American woman, so I certainly disagree that anything has ever had to do with race,” Spicer told The Daily News. “I think she was always deemed as a person that added to the team of community and economic development.”

Draft reorganization plans demoted her, city disagrees

At the center of Jean’s discrimination charge is her claim that Arthur Robert, former director of the Community and Economic Development Division, and current division deputy director Erika Jerram, downgraded her role in plans to reorganize the division.

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The division’s reorganization was mandated by the charter Framingham adopted at the beginning of 2018 when it transitioned from a town government to a city government. Robert presented two reorganization proposals to the City Council, first in October 2018, the second in May 2019. Both were rejected, and a third plan was never proposed. Robert resigned in July.

Jean said that in the proposed reorganization plans, her rank in the division was lowered from department head to subordinate of the division’s deputy director. She said the move amounted to a demotion and was made because she is black.

Jean said Robert was “always aggressively punitive” toward her before the failed reorganization attempts, which she claimed were used as “a pretext for discrimination.”

“The plan promoted all similarly situated white department or division heads, except for me, the black one,” Jean wrote in her statement.

In a response to Jean’s federal discrimination complaint, Jeffrey McAllister, an attorney working for the city, denied that Jean was ever discriminated against or treated unfairly by Robert or Jerram, adding that Jean had been warned about being discourteous toward staff on multiple occasions.

McAllister said that Jean was never a department head and that while she did lead “the Community Development aspect of the Division, the City did not consider that office to be a true ‘Department,’ such as the Department of Public Works or some other major department,” according to the city’s rebuttal of Jean’s EEOC complaint.

“Thus, Ms. Jean’s comparison of herself to other, true department heads for pay purposes was inaccurate,” he wrote. The draft reorganization plans were created with the help of a consultant who had no knowledge of Jean’s race, McAllister wrote.

Jean said she had always reported to Robert, the division director, not Jerram, the division deputy director. The rejected reorganization plans had her reporting to Jerram. Jean pointed to the job posting she applied to before being hired in November 2015 as evidence that she was, in fact, a department head.

The job description reads, “The Community Development (CD) Coordinator directs Framingham’s Community Development (CD) Department within the Division of Community and Economic Development (CED).”

The Daily News confirmed with the city’s Human Resources department that Jean’s employment code, which was also the employment code used for the person who held the job before her, is not the same as that of other department heads in the city.

Finance Subcommittee budget questions block grant spending process

Jean also claims that Finance Subcommittee questioning over the course of several meetings during spring budget talks was “very rough,” adding that it felt to her as if it was a “public, fault-finding process.”

As previously reported by the Daily News, members of the Finance Subcommittee took issue with the fact that Jean is essentially in charge of proposing how much of the city’s federal community development block grant is distributed, a fact that they were previously unaware of. They thought those decisions were made by a committee.

Some members of the Finance Subcommittee were also distressed to learn that $238,856 in grant money from previous years remains unspent.

Members of the Finance Subcommittee began questioning Jean about her role after she denied a request for a raise from Downtown Framingham Inc. Director Courtney Thraen, whose salary is entirely funded by the city’s community development block grant.

Judy Grove, District 8 City Councilor and member of the Finance Subcommittee, told the Daily News that since Framingham transitioned to a city government, the Finance Subcommittee has focused on more aggressive oversight of spending across city government.

“If she thinks this is individual, it is not,” Grove said, adding that the Finance Subcommittee has been hard on departments ranging from the Department of Public Works to the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs Department. “That’s what we do. We don’t sit back and rubber stamp things. It’s across the board. We’re trying to find out where all this money is going.”

Neither Jean’s role in proposing how the grant money is distributed, nor the fact that grant money is rolled over breaks federal guidelines because public hearings are held before the money is allocated.

Jean stressed that she properly administered the grant, and that money remained unspent because there were not enough proposals on which to spend the funds, which are intended to benefit low- and moderate-income residents. Finance Subcommittees said more effort should have been made to find projects on which to spend the funds, as city residents have needs that are currently going unmet.

Jean also emphasized that she has been meticulous in administering the block grant funds, airing on the side of caution, because of mismanagement of the grant that occurred before she joined the division in November 2015.

Town audits in 2014 and 2015 found several deficiencies in how the town administered the grant, including improper reporting of block grant awards and rehab inspections, improper documentation of environmental reviews, and other violations.

A 2015 audit found that “internal controls over the procurement process within the Community Development Office and specifically with federal HUD grants were deficient,” and in January 2015, a housing quality inspector working with the grant was fired after the town determined he “exhibited conduct that at a minimum is grossly incompetent, and potentially fraudulent or criminal in nature as well.”

Jean said previous mismanagement of the grant meant she had to essentially build up the block grant program from scratch without instruction from anyone familiar with the program, which she said was at “a complete standstill.”

Framingham’s community development block grant program is still recovering from the mismanagement identified before she arrived, which is one reason more than $200,000 in grant funds remain unspent, Jean said.

Jean hoping for ‘a quiet comeback’

Jean said, despite her experiences, she wants to make a “quiet comeback” to work in Framingham at what she said was a “dream job” in a community that she loves. She said she’s set a return date with the city, but did not want to make that date public.

“This job totally coalesces with my goals and career,” Jean told the Daily News, adding that she enjoys working with community members to provide grant funding that fills needs in the city.

Jean told the Daily News that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sent her a letter informing her that she could proceed to filing a lawsuit against the city. In the end she decided not to do so.

“I’m fighting for my career,” she said. “I wasn’t looking to make a million dollars.”