On Wednesday morning, a City Council committee sent a $500,000 settlement to the full council for approval.
In late January a Jackson County jury ordered the city to pay water services chemist LaDonna Nunley $150,000.
In the lawsuit, Nunley claimed she was racially discriminated against and that her work environment was sexually hostile. The jury threw out the racial discrimination claims but sided with Nunley’s sexual discrimination claims.
Rather than appeal, the city is poised to settle Thursday.
Two more lawsuits from employees in the same water services department are scheduled for jury trials in April and May, including “Dr. H20” Wilbur Dunnell’s racial discrimination claims.
Though he could not comment on the Nunley case, Nunley’s lawyer David Lunceford believes the city isn’t properly investigating discrimination claims due to inadequate staffing.
“It’s my understanding there are two full-time and one part-time investigators to look into complaints of discrimination,” said Lunceford. “That means there’s one full-time investigator [per] 2,250 [city] employees.”
Lunceford said he’s seen complainants not receive adequate responses for up to two years.
“For every case you see on TV, there’s probably a dozen other cases that never made it to a lawyer because they just said, ‘You know what, I give up. I’m just going to quit or I’ll just choke down going to work and be discriminated against because I need to feed my family.’ That’s wrong,” said Lunceford.
Lunceford asserts there would be fewer lawsuits and therefore fewer tax dollars spent on city litigation if the city hired more investigators.
“I love Kansas City. We deserve better than that from the city,” said Lunceford.
The City of Kansas City sent 41 Action News the following statement:
The work of the City’s Equal Employment Opportunity investigators is vital for the City because we value all our employees and want them to feel welcomed and successful in our workplace.
Since inception until recently, the EEO unit operated with 1.5 FTEs. With improving economic times, the City Manager, with the recommendation of the Law Department, was able to provide two additional FTEs in the FY16 budget, which has dramatically increased the efficiency of the work unit. The unit has decreased the investigation time by 55% over the last two years, and its efficiency is continuing to increase. The City’s goal is to provide each employee who makes a complaint with a timely investigation and response.
With the rare exception of a complaint that may have been lost in the system, the City has not taken multiple years to process a complaint, and the current average processing time is 66 days. The City of Kansas City is investigating and processing claims more quickly due its investment in staffing, which results in a more efficient use of taxpayer monies.
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Brian Abel can be reached at brian.abel@kshb.com.
