WAS IT A COVERUP? COUNTY'S DEAL AN EFFORT TO HIDE RELIGIOUS HARASSMENT, CRITICS SAY.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

County employees in Lancaster repeatedly complained about harassing behavior from their bosses and co-workers, but the accusations were ignored until they became the basis of a lawsuit that experts say exposes mismanagement and incompetence by Los Angeles County's administration.

The managers were reassigned without being disciplined, according to hundreds of pages of court documents and scores of interviews by the Daily News. And the county tried to cover up the allegations with a monetary settlement and gag order, experts said.

``This is a clear abuse of supervisorial powers in that office and it's astonishing that the county personnel in charge haven't taken more action,'' said Ralph Rossum, director of the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College.

As early as 1994, numerous workers in the Lancaster welfare office complained they felt pressured to join a Santeria religious group in order to get promotions and preferential treatment, court records show.

Santeria, a religion common in the Caribbean and other areas, mixes some Catholic practices with non-Christian beliefs about spirits, hexes and blessings, and sometimes animal sacrifice.

The tensions reached a climax in 1997 when a bloody cow's tongue, with the names of 14 workers attached to it, was hung outside the office - an act viewed by some as a Santeria death threat. Citing stress from the incident, 22 employees filed industrial injury claims.

The county approved an $85,000 settlement last month for two of the social workers who sued. The county reached undisclosed workers' compensation settlements with the other employees, sources said.

``When you have 22 people who have health- and stress-related absences, you have a huge inefficiency and morale problem,'' said Rossum, adding that the county ``absolutely dropped the ball.''

``Imagine if it would have been a cross-burning. There would have been an enormous investigation and repercussions.''

Experts agree

Other experts agreed with Rossum and said the county wanted to hide its mistakes through the settlement offer that requires everyone involved to keep the details secret.

``The motive behind virtually all confidentiality agreements is so the (parties at fault) can keep from public scrutiny the result of their bad acts,'' said Pasadena civil rights attorney Dan Stormer, who has represented dozens of county employees in various lawsuits against the county. He is not covered by the gag rule because he didn't work on this case.

Stormer said the county should have conducted a ``legitimate investigation'' and protected the county workers who eventually sued.

``A good investigation involves a thorough, timely and objective analysis. My experience with the county is that their investigations are not thorough, not timely and often aimed at supporting the status quo.''

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich represents the district that includes Lancaster. His spokesman, Chris Dickerson, said confidentiality agreements are common in both private and public lawsuits.

``It has nothing to do with a cover-up,'' he said. ``Neither side is anxious for the details to be discussed and tried in a public forum. They reached a private agreement and both sides are satisfied. This keeps the county and the litigants from stepping out and trying this in a public forum.''

Complaints outlined

Despite the secret nature of the case, the county's failure to address the problem sooner and its low opinion of the workers' initial complaints are outlined in several hundred pages of documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Deputy County Counsel Ruben Baeza Jr. wrote in a Jan. 19 court motion seeking to dismiss the case that the allegations by Julie Scheuer of Lancaster and Kathryn Sierra of Palmdale are like a ``sensationalistic dime-store novel replete with unsupported assertions and baseless conclusions.''

``(They) have constructed a fable filled with cult rituals, conspiracies among county of Los Angeles managers and employees engaged in multiple acts of animal sacrifice and hate crimes,'' Baeza wrote. ``But (they) have not produced any competent, admissible evidence to support their shock-inducing allegations.''

Other documents, however, show that the two Department of Public Social Services eligibility workers complained to their superiors and union officials as early as 1994 about preferential treatment given to members of the Santeria group. Department managers took no action.

Three employees - who sheriff's investigators suspect hung the cow's tongue in 1997 - were never disciplined, and have since been transferred to other offices throughout the county, court records show.

The county provided counseling to those affected by the tongue incident, and four training sessions were held regarding policies on religious discrimination, court records also reveal.

`Offensive treatment'

As a result of a religious discrimination complaint Scheuer and Sierra filed with the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission, investigator Sertello M. Humphrey wrote that the county investigated the cow's tongue incident and found Scheuer and Sierra ``were subjected to objectionable and offensive treatment by co-workers.''

But the EOC investigator also reported in a letter dated June 18, 1999, ``The investigation revealed that when management became aware of the unpleasant and offensive atmosphere it took immediate corrective action to stop the harassment.''

However, others reached a different conclusion - that the county was slow to act.

``The unwillingness of the county to deal with the complaint right at the beginning shows a failure of management, an avoidance of dealing with a real problem,'' said Catherine Burke, professor of public administration at the University of Southern California.

In the private sector, those involved would have been fired, but it's extremely difficult to dismiss civil servants, Burke said, so management might have taken the easy way out by transferring those involved.

``One of the things that desperately needs to be overhauled in our government is the personnel system,'' she said.

Robert P. Biller, former dean and now a professor of public administration at the USC School of Policy, Planning and Development, said county administrators made ``serious mistakes.''

``It's really critical to maintain a supportive workplace and when an employee complains that there is something offensive, hostile, harassing or frightening, the employer has a serious responsibility to investigate the matter, determine whether employees are complicit and do something about it,'' Biller said.

Bad management

The Rose Institute's Rossum said transferring those involved to other offices is bad management. He described it as, ``Let someone else try to solve the problem on their watch and not deal with the problem where it occurs.''

He said the managers' behavior went well beyond what is regarded as appropriate free exercise of religious beliefs and ``borders on government officials using their official status to proselytize their faith.''

``This is a classic 'hostile workplace' - where it's rendered hostile not by sexual innuendo but by religious proselytizing,'' Rossum said.

``Bad management practices and bad supervision resulted in an $85,000 hit on the county budget and the confidentiality agreement is a way to keep it under the rug and out of public view,'' Rossum added. ``This prevents any sort of serious public accountability of the agency.''

But some county officials defended the confidential agreement as standard procedure.

Asked why employees were not disciplined and why the county agreed to a confidentiality clause, Department of Public Social Services spokesman Brian Lew said ``all personnel matters are confidential.''

``The answer is, all provisions of the settlement were agreed to by all parties involved,'' Lew said.

Now that all sides have agreed to the settlement, as a formality Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kenneth Freeman is expected to dismiss the employees' lawsuit April 25.