SEWRPC Executive Director Phil Evenson spins the truth so hard in the story that it turns into something else.

But SEWRPC spent the last three years establishing a stronger connection to city residents, said Executive Director Phil Evenson. It created a task force to respond to complaints that minorities and low-income residents aren’t properly represented by the com-mission. It also partnered with groups including the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin Inc. and the Milwaukee Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to hold hearings about the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee Commuter Rail project.

Evenson apparently forgot to mention that the NAACP and the ACLU have named SEWRPC in an affirmative action complaint, but Ryan, fine reporter that he is, did not forget that pertinent little fact.

As for the Environmental Justice Task Force to which Evenson referred — it took years of browbeating before SEWRPC agreed to establish the advisory committee, and Evenson already has made clear he will not implement recommendations from the group if he disagrees with them.

The task force, by the way, is supposed to assist in outreach to low-income and minority communities, but SEWRPC cynically did not ask it to promote participation in the recertification public comment period. SEWRPC and the Federal Highway Administration are quite clearly, in fact, trying to supress public participation in the recertification process by eliminating the traditional public hearing and replacing it with a public meeting, at which members of the public are allowed to wander around and talk to bureaucrats and give testimony in secret to court reporters.

Ald. Willie Wade yesterday called killing the public hearing “cowardly.” He’s right.

SEWRPC and FHWA are behaving horribly, singling out southeastern Wisconsin for discriminatory treatment. That makes it all the more important for people to participate in the recertification process. So a reprise from an earlier action alert.

As the region’s Metropolitan Planning Organization, SEWRPC makes recommendations about transportation planning. These transportation projects impact priorities for government funding, how healthy our air is, where housing is developed, job growth, the availability of mass transit, the supply of and potential movement of water outside the Great Lakes Basin, and much more. The agency, however, often has ignored the concerns of minority and low-income residents of Milwaukee. For example, SEWRPC has yet to conduct a regional housing study – something it promised in 2005 to do. It has denied requests from groups representing low income and minority communities to participate on advisory task forces. It rejected the requests of its own Environmental Justice Task Force to seek a diverse and inclusive pool of candidates to fill its Executive Director and Assistant Director positions.

WHAT: Public Meeting on SEWRPC’s Certification as Metro Planning Organization
WHERE: Downtown Transit Center, Harbor Lights Room, 909 E. Michigan Ave. Milwaukee
WHEN: October 22, 2008 5 p.m. – 7 p.m.

The vote does not have the strength of law. The task force can make recommendations, but cannot tell the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission what it must do. SEWRPC Executive Director Phil Evenson already told the task force at its last meeting that he thought SEWRPC entirely capable of doing what it hasn’t done before and doesn’t think the recommendation to use outside entities was necessary.

Stay tuned. More on this later, including video.

The task force, though, as everyone on it knows, has no real power over the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission. All it can do is suggest. Task force member Joette Heckenbach requested that SEWRPC get outside assistance to conduct socio-economic analyses as part of the agency’s studies. Evenson and SEWRPC Deputy Director Ken Yunker don’t like that idea much.

Below the video of SEWRPC’s resistance is part of the affirmative action complaint the NAACP, with the assistance of the ACLU, filed against SEWRPC with the Department of Labor’s Office of Contract Compliance. It lays out nicely how SEWRPC prefers to hire its major consultants — from a rather small list of white people.

Facts Relating to Non-Compliance With Affirmative Action in Use of Professional Service
Subcontractors

39. SEWRPC has hired, and continues to hire, “independent contractors” who provide significant and ongoing professional services, including many of the kinds of services that are or potentially could be performed by SEWRPC employees.

40. Upon information and belief, SEWRPC has routinely identified, hired and retained most or all of these “independent contractors” on a “no bid” basis.

41. Upon information and belief, SEWRPC retains significant control over the performance of work by these “independent contractors.”

42. Upon information and belief, SEWRPC did not comply with affirmative action or disadvantaged business enterprise requirements or policies in hiring these contractors, or otherwise attempt to ensure that the professional services contractors it hired are members of diverse groups.

43. Upon information and belief, SEWRPC has not engaged in any efforts to monitor or otherwise ensure that these professional service subcontractors engage in Affirmative Action.

44. SEWRPC does not identify or report these professional service subcontractors in its EEO reports, and does not maintain demographic data on them.

45. Such “independent contractors” from whom no demographic information is collected, who were not recruited through the methods specified in the AA Plan, and who are not identified in affirmative action reports, include, but are not limited to, the following:

a. Since 1997, SEWRPC has annually contracted with its former executive director, who upon information and belief is a white non-Hispanic person, to provide engineering, planning and surveying services including but not limited to “determination of an annual work program” related to public land surveys; “oversight of Commission staff activities intended to carry out the work program,” and designing and executing other projects assigned by SEWRPC. For 2008, SEWRPC pays its former director $6,500 per month ($78,000 per year) based on the “equivalent of three-quarters time of service,” and provides him with office space, a vehicle, telephone service, and support staff; during some prior years, SEWRPC also paid for its former director’s health insurance.

b. Since 2006, SEWRPC has utilized the services of two designated individuals, who upon information and belief are white non-Hispanic persons, as “personal service contractors” for planning services related to the 30th St. Corridor Redevelopment, and, upon information and belief, has provided them with office space in Milwaukee County. The 30th St. Corridor is in the central city of Milwaukee, an area predominantly populated by persons of color.

c. Since 2007, if not earlier, SEWRPC has entered into an annual contract with the University of Wisconsin Extension for the services of a specifically identified individual, who upon information and belief is a white non-Hispanic person, for public education and outreach, including outreach to communities of color. The contract obligates SEWRPC to pay 100% of this person’s salary and benefits, and milage and expenses.

Below that is another excerpt from the NAACP’s discrimination complaint against SEWRPC. The complaint was filed with the US Department of Labor’s Office of Contract Compliance.

The two again show a consistent SEWRPC attitude outdated arrogance. The first part of this series is here.

The video

Excerpt from the complaint

Facts Relating to Non-Compliance with Affirmative Action in Promotion

24. In or about March 2008, it became public knowledge that SEWRPC’s Executive Director planned to retire at the end of 2008.

25. The Executive Director is a professional position within SEWRPC, and the retirement of the Executive Director would create a professional “job opening” in that position.

26. In 2006, SEWRPC established an Environmental Justice Task Force (EJTF), the stated mission of which is to “enhance the consideration and integration of environmental justice throughout the regional planning process,” by, inter alia, “ensur[ing] public involvement of low-income and minority groups in decision making” and “assur[ing that] low-income and minority groups receive proportionate share of benefits.”

27. The EJTF is a group that includes persons of color, persons with disabilities, and members of neighborhood organizations.

28. At a meeting on March 18, 2008, members of the EJTF – having learned that SEWRPC’s white non-Hispanic Executive Director was planning to retire – requested that the process to hire a new Executive Director be conducted in a manner to ensure a diverse pool of candidates and participation from diverse constituencies (such as the EJTF) in the selection process, including helping to identify appropriate candidates for consideration in the pool of candidates.

29. On March 20, 2008, SEWRPC’s Executive Committee rejected the request of SEWRPC’s own EJTF and instead voted to negotiate a contract to promote SEWRPC’s assistant director, a white non-Hispanic person, to the position of Executive Director.

30. On April 24, 2008, SEWRPC’s Executive Committee ratified a contract with its assistant director to become Executive Director.

31. SEWRPC conducted no search for the Executive Director opening, and thus did not comply with the commitments it made in its AA Plan to advertise job openings in minority media and to minority organizations and neighborhood groups.

32. SEWRPC conducted no search for the Executive Director opening, and thus did not comply with the commitments it made in its own AA Plan to work with minority groups and neighborhood organizations to identify persons who might be able to fill openings with the Commission.

33. At a May 27, 2008 EJTF meeting, EJTF members requested that SEWRPC conduct a search to ensure a diverse pool of candidates for the assistant director position being vacated by the assistant director due to his hiring as Executive Director.34. At the May 27 EJTF meeting, the current Executive Director stated that SEWRPC preferred to “promote from within.”

35. At an EJTF meeting on July 29, 2008, SEWRPC’s Executive Director reiterated that SEWRPC “promotes from within” “whenever possible” and that any affirmative action in hiring is focused on entry-level positions.

36. At the July 29 EJTF meeting, EJTF members reiterated their concerns about SEWRPC’s lack of affirmative action for hiring at multiple levels, not just for entry level positions.

37. Despite the facts that SEWRPC has been subject to affirmative action requirements for more than three decades; has attained only negligible improvement in minority hiring even at entry levels, especially for professional staff; has a total lack of persons of color in senior and supervisory professional positions; and has an almost all-white professional staff, “promoting from within” is its longstanding pattern and practice.

38. As a result of SEWRPC’s history of failing to recruit and hire meaningful numbers of people of color to even entry level professional positions, its insistance on a policy of promoting from within has resulted in precluding persons of color from being placed in leadership positions within the organization as these positions have become available.

SEWRPC has not taken seriously for years its responsibility to hire a diverse work force. Its affirmative action plan apparently is a cut-and-paste job that repeats itself year in and year out with little change except the date. It is unclear whether SEWRPC officials actually read the document — it seems doubtful. Executive Director Phil Evenson even has recently disowned a statement that has been in the plan for years. He simply does not believe, he said, that a lack of transit to SEWRPC headquarters in Pewaukee may hamper minority hiring. That sentence likely will be stricken from the affirmative action report.

It’s not only in hiring that SEWRPC wants to be a power unto itself. At a July meeting of the SEWRPC Environmental Justice Task Force, Evenson objected to a request by Task Force member Joette Heckenbach that an outside agency be hired to assist it in performing socio-economic impact studies as part of its major plans. That proposal likely will be discussed again in October.

Those two issues — SEWRPC’s refusal to act in good faith in affirmative action matters and its reluctance to allow outside voices other than its hand-picked, often no-bid consultants, are two branches of the same problematic tree. SEWRPC has run as a kingdom unto itself for years, and would like to continue to do so.

This is the first in a series of posts combining video clips of the discussion about socio-economic impact analyses and excerpts from the affirmative action complaint. They are two different issues, but the theme is amazingly consistent.

First, the meeting clip.

Excerpts from the complaint, submitted by ACLU attorney Karyn Rotker and ACLU volunteer attorney Rebecca Salawdeh.

SEWRPC has been subject to affirmative action regulations since at least 1975….

12. Upon information and belief, SEWRPC’s Affirmative Action Plan and Job Group Analysis for July 1, 2008-June 30, 2009 has not been completed.

13. The AA Plan identifies, as a “Problem Area,” its lack of minority professional staff.

14. In June 1996, SEWRPC had only one professional staff person of color out of 41 professional staff members, and no professional African-American or Latino staff.

15. In June 2007, more than a decade later, SEWRPC still had only one professional staff person of color out of 42 professional staff members, and no professional African-American or Latino staff.

16. The single person of color on SEWRPC’s professional staff in June 2007 was the same individual who had been there since June 2001, if not earlier.

17. As of June 2007, SEWRPC had no senior professionals, principal professionals, or officials or managers of color on its professional staff.

18. As of June 2007, SEWRPC had no senior or supervisory staff of color on its technical staff.

19. SEWRPC’s AA Plan asserts that increasing diversity among its professional staff is difficult because it anticipates hiring only for one or two professional positions per year over the subsequent several years.

20. SEWRPC’s AA Plan also asserts that increasing diversity among its professional staff is difficult because many of its professional staff remain at SEWRPC for many years.

21. The AA Plan’s “Action-Oriented Program” to “increase Nonwhite Employment on the Commission Staff,” includes, inter alia,
a. Expanding the use of minority media to advertise job openings;
b. Expanding the minority groups and neighborhood organizations that are notified of job openings; and
c. Establishing working relationships with minority groups and neighborhood organizations through which SEWRPC may identify qualified minority candidates for employment, and through which the groups could refer qualified minority candidates to SEWRPC for consideration in the pool of candidates when staff
positions become open.

22. SEWRPC’s Action Oriented Program said that these affirmative actions would be taken with respect to “job openings.”

23. SEWRPC’s Action Oriented Program did not state that SEWRPC would take affirmative action only for entry level jobs or in any way indicate that SEWRPC would prefer to promote from within.

Not true, SEWRPC Executive Director Phil Evenson told SEWRPC’s Environmental Justice Task Force last week. SEWRPC was simply wrong all those years.

The task force suggested that SEWRPC hire a headhunter to help recruit qualified minorities, and Evenson accepted the suggestion, at least on a limited basis.

Below is a video of some of Evenson’s comments, followed by a response by pro-Milwaukee Jim Rowen, author of The Political Environment blog. Rowen has reported extensively on SEWRPC’s affirmative action assertions. A couple of the postings are here and here.