Ray Coleman was fired in January from his job
as site superintendent at Horseshoe Lake State Park, and a month
later he was in court, alleging that he’d been the victim of
discrimination. Coleman, an African-American, says that he was
passed over for several promotions at the Illinois Department of
Natural Resources and ultimately fired because he supported a
Republican candidate in St. Clair County
and questioned the job
qualifications of an employee who had been promoted to a
supervisory position.
The employee is the son of Sam Flood,
director of governmental relations for Gov. Rod Blagojevich and a
Democratic powerbroker in southern Illinois. Coleman’s lawsuit named Flood and DNR
director Joel Brunsvold as defendants. In July, a federal judge
rejected their effort to have
the case dismissed; on Monday, a
court-ordered settlement conference failed to
produce a
settlement.
Coleman’s claims — that politics
and patronage at DNR resulted in a case of discrimination —
are echoed in similar complaints by other state workers. Since 2002, at least four other
African-American current and former employees of DNR — two
women and two men — have lodged individual complaints with
the Illinois Department of Human Rights and in federal court
against the agency. In each case, sufficient evidence of
discrimination was found to issue a right-to-sue letter, giving
complainants 90 days to file a lawsuit against the state. This week, the Illinois Association of
Minorities in Government and the Illinois State Conference of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
announced that they will ask Attorney General Lisa Madigan,
the Illinois Human Rights Commission, and the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission to investigate what they believe is a pattern of
racial discrimination at DNR. Roy Williams, executive director of IAMG,
says that African-American employment at DNR — where the
number of minority workers usually hovers around 5 percent —
has declined over the past three years. Furthermore, Williams says, blacks were
disproportionately represented in recent DNR layoffs and that
payback for political favors by the Blagojevich administration
keeps qualified minorities such as Coleman from getting jobs and
promotions in state government. “I’m a Democrat. The governor is
a Democrat. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to shut my
mouth — I’m still going to do what’s
right,” Williams says. DNR spokeswoman Melaney Arnold defends the
agency and the governor, saying that Blagojevich has appointed a
record 167 African-Americans to key positions in his administration
since his election in 2002. Also, Arnold says, the agency aggressively
recruits minorities by participating in “as many job fairs as
possible.”
The agency even paid for employees to attend
IAMG’s annual conference this year and reimbursed them for
travel expenses, she says. Arnold also acknowledges that despite the
best efforts of DNR management, minority numbers have decreased but
cites retirement, transfers, and promotions as the cause. Arnold
refutes Williams’ assertion that blacks were adversely
affected in agency cutbacks. The problem, she says, is that DNR is
an agency with a broad reach outside the state’s urban areas,
with many of the job opportunities located where few
minorities live or would consider moving. Williams, a former DNR employee, disagrees,
maintaining that the agency could boost minority employment at its
offices here in Springfield. Above all, he says, although several
discrimination complaints were filed by his group’s members
against DNR under Gov. George Ryan, a Republican, he’s
disappointed that Blagojevich hasn’t done anything to rectify
the problem. “They’ve overpoliticized the
process. Not everybody wants to be a policymaker,” Williams
says. “It’s gotten so bad,” he
jokes, “that if somebody just wants a job picking up paper,
they’re being asked, ‘How’d you vote?’
”
This article appears in Sep 22-28, 2005.
