Report pointed to favoritism in LV department

Sito Negron

Thursday, Dec. 11, 2003 | 11:12 a.m.

Las Vegas city managers received a consultant's review of the now embattled Neighborhood Services Department in March, and it included a finding that could have served as a warning of things to come.

"A very high 78 percent (of employees) feels that employees in different sections of their department are not all treated the same. ... These responses indicate that respondents perceive that there is a sense of favoritism within the department, that promotions and rules are not applied fairly," consultant Bill Kirchhoff wrote in the March report, which covered three city departments and on balance was favorable.

City Manager Doug Selby said Wednesday that "if you read the report in its totality there were some things they (Neighborhood Services) were doing exceptionally well," but he also admitted that "it did bring to our attention some areas that, looking back today, we'd say those were indicators of some issues."

In recent weeks the department director, Sharon Segerblom, has been demoted and transferred to a different department. Another high-ranking employee, administrative officer Wendell Williams, who also is a state assemblyman, has been fired.

Both were involved in a city investigation that found Williams was treated preferentially. He improperly billed the city for time worked while the Legislature was in session in 2001 and 2003, investigators concluded. The investigators also determined that Segerblom failed to properly supervise Williams.

City officials also said Williams misused his municipal cell phone. Williams agreed to pay back $1,844 for the cell phone and $6,700 for pay he collected during the 2003 legislative session. But he also went public, saying he did nothing wrong and was only following a process set up years ago.

He claimed that a November 2001 promotion came about at least in part because of work he performed on behalf of the city during the 2001 Legislature. A city audit released this November reviewing multiple issues associated with the time cards and cell phones did not delve deeply into that assertion.

Segerblom has said that she was not comfortable supervising Williams, and that his position as a legislator made it difficult for her to supervise him. She and her lawyer have said that the responsibility for Williams rests at least in part with the lack of policies and procedures on how to handle an employee who also is a lawmaker in the Legislature, from which the city of Las Vegas derives its powers.

The March report's findings "certainly indicate that the city manager's office as well as Sharon were aware of this perception in the department," said Laura FitzSimmons, Segerblom's lawyer. "I don't think Sharon for a second would dispute that some employees for a number of different factors felt people were treated differently."

FitzSimmons said that on whole, however, it was important to note the positives in the report. The department was rated highly when it came to delivering services and employees' knowledge of their duties.

Segerblom said Wednesday that she responded to the March report -- produced by consultant Bill Kirchhoff -- as best she could. She said she drew up plans to address employee's concerns about lack of fairness in promotions, but that she could only do so much.

"I had a whole matrix of every suggestion the Kirchhoff report made and we had a plan and a timeline to strengthen ourselves on any concerns he had," said Segerblom. "Many of the concerns were already addressed, others were in the process of being addressed when I was demoted and suspended. I did everything I could at the level I could."

When asked whether the report was a warning sign that management should address Williams' job status before it became an issue, she said, "I didn't hire Wendell, and I didn't promote him."

The city auditor's report, performed in October, notes that while Segerblom recommended Williams for a pay raise in 2001, he was at the limit for his job classification. He was then promoted, although Segerblom did not sign the promotion form.

Segerblom also noted that one of Kirchhoff's recommendations was to give her a deputy director because of the complexity of the department, "and I never got that."

The department was created in 1996, and had 80 employees and four supervisors administering an annual budget of more than $32 million at the time of the report. Its major responsibilities were for code enforcement, and administration of federal, state and local grants through citizen review boards.

Segerblom said her department received "stellar" reviews in previous federal audits of how grants were used.

The March report from Kirchhoff included a "climate" survey that covered nine categories, including systems and procedures, department direction, and training and development. Thirty-six of the department's employees responded to the survey, the bulk of them nonmanagers.

While most responses were positive -- for example, 70 percent said they understood the department goals and objectives, and 94 percent said that responding to citizen concerns was their unit's priority -- promotions, discipline and favoritism emerged as issues.

Almost 60 percent of the respondents did not feel that promotional procedures were fair, almost 70 percent did not feel rules and regulations were applied fairly, and 58 percent did not think they could have input when it came to changing rules and regulations.

Only 45 percent felt that "employees who get out of line are disciplined," and only 31 percent perceived that hard-working, productive employees got promotions.

The summary statement at the end of this portion of the Kirchhoff report read: "The work climate in the City of Las Vegas Department of Neighborhood Services could be categorized as generally positive. Those which have a neutral rating (systems and procedures, direction, and training/employee development) should serve as a warning and those issues should be monitored by management staff."

City Manager Selby said it would hard to say the Kirchhoff report should have led to an earlier finding in the Williams case.

"I'll let you interpret the (report) in the context of what has come about since then," Selby said. "I don't think you could say the study pointed to or suggested in any way what ultimately came out with the issue of time cards."

He said it was not meant to ferret out "wrongdoing or financial improprieties or things of that sort. It was more of an assessment how is that organization working, what do the employees feel how do the customers feel."

Selby, like Segerblom, noted that "while there were some kind of negative indications there, there were some real positives too." And Selby said the findings of favoritism, while in the report and subsequently in the city auditor's report, were "vague and unspecific."

"The intent was not to target individuals and say this happened on this date but for them to give this assessment," Selby said.

He said the report "didn't give us any indication in particular as to who was being favored in the department."

He said that such concerns are not unusual: "You'll probably find in most departments some employees feel there is favoritism, partly because they don't know the full scope of what goes into recruitment, or don't know the scope of another employee's job."

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