Equal rights laws under review

Thursday, Feb. 28, 2002 | 9:43 a.m.

Rights meeting

The meeting will include testimony by workers who say their cases have been before the Nevada Equal Rights Commission for at least two years -- 15 months longer than allowed according to the commission's strategic plan.

"We've been looking into the commission for several years now and want to bring some closure to the process," said David Sanchez, chairman of the Nevada committee that reports to the federal Civil Rights Commission.

Sanchez, approved in February to lead the Nevada committee, said workers since 1996 have complained to his predecessors regarding issues ranging from the time taken to resolve their cases with the state agency to the quality of service they received.

A March 2001 legislative audit showed that workers were waiting an average of a year to get results from the state agency. On April 30 the agency hired a new administrator, who was charged with streamlining the process and, for the first time, conducting monthly reviews of claims investigators.

Still, Sanchez said, workers dissatisfied with the agency have sought the help of the Civil Rights Commission.

He has invited a representative from the Los Angeles-based Western office of the federal agency to oversee the meeting.

"We're basically at the beginning of a fact-finding process," Tom Pilla, the agency's Western representative, said.

Pilla said Friday's session will be the first of several hearings, including one he hopes to have with Equal Rights Commission staff.

Once enough information has been gathered the federal agency can choose one of several avenues, including holding a formal public hearing on the issue. Formal recommendations could be the result of the hearing.

The last such public hearing, on police-community relations in Reno, was held in 1992. One result involved moving Reno's internal affairs office from the police station to a separate building, Pilla said.

In any case, the federal agency is not empowered to take punitive action, and instead attempts to draw attention to federal civil rights laws and their enforcement.

"Nevada is still a small enough state that our statewide committee members can draft a letter to the governor with recommendations, for example, and hope that some changes would be made," Pilla said.