Civil rights panel’s lack of activity questioned

By Timothy Pratt

Friday, Jan. 7, 2005 | 5:02 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

January 8 - 9, 2005

If there is a problem with discrimination in Nevada, it would be difficult to know.

That's because the local arm of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Washington's watchdog on the issue, hasn't issued a major report or conducted a public hearing for nearly 15 years.

"We've been rather silent (and) people don't know who we are," David Sanchez, chairman of the Nevada advisory committee to the commission, said in a recent interview.

The problem, Sanchez said, is money, or lack of it. The state committee, a volunteer group, hasn't enjoyed support from its parent agency, an executive office born in the civil rights era, he said.

But local civil rights advocates say the committee's lack of activity has produced a vacuum that is increasingly troubling as the state, particularly the Las Vegas Valley, grows in population and in diversity.

They say that state and local public and private agencies look at pieces of the problem, but the commission is the only agency with the clout and the mission to keep track of discrimination as it affects all groups, in all arenas.

They point with concern to Sanchez's failure to follow through on his August 2003 announcement that the committee would be producing a report on discrimination statewide.

"How do we build an inclusive society if the watchdog organizations are not monitoring?" asked longtime local advocate Mujahid Ramadan, vice president of the NAACP's Las Vegas branch and a board member of the political group Caucus of African American Nevadans.

Ramadan said the report is needed in a state that he said will become a "majority minority" in the coming decades. Census Bureau estimates prepared in 2003 indicate that a third of the state's population comes from the three main minority groups -- blacks, Asians and Hispanics.

"We need this kind of report, since discrimination is still going on ... and it's no longer just black people ... it's people of color in general," he said.

The civil rights commission was founded to gather and disseminate information on discrimination, as well as make recommendations to the president and Congress.

The state committees and the national office are supposed to issue reports that are the result of investigations, public hearings and data-gathering efforts. Individuals can be subpoenaed to appear before either the national commission or the state committees, which have the same charters under law.

It has no enforcement powers, but its work on a local and national level has led to changes in laws and policies in the public and private spheres -- most recently with voting disenfranchisement in Florida in 2000.

The local committees can choose their issues. Their membership is set every two years when they are re-chartered by the national commissioners in Washington.

People who want to be members of local committees can apply for the positions or they can be nominated by community groups or current members. The regional office sends paperwork to the applicant to fill out, and that paperwork winds up in front of the national commissioners during the re-chartering.

Though Sanchez said he was stifled by a lack of backing from Washington, other states have figured out ways to get work done.

Mike Martinez, who served as chairman of Utah's advisory committee to the commission from 1997 to 2002, said "the (agency's) name itself is a hammer" on the local level.

"When you have 'civil rights' in your name, and you're a federal agency, people pay attention," he said.

During his tenure as chairman, Martinez said, Utah's committee conducted investigations and held hearings on issues such as discrimination in schools and a state agency's performance in handling discrimination complaints, leading to changes in laws and policies.

"It's not an issue of funding, but initiative," Martinez said.

In Nevada, one of the more visible agencies dealing with discrimination is the Nevada Equal Rights Commission, a regulatory office that responds to complaints about discrimination in the workplace.

But as Lynda Parven, director of that commission, pointed out, the state agency's purview regarding discrimination is limited to what occurs in the workplace and also doesn't study the issue or draw any conclusions about tendencies over time.

For example, her agency saw the number of complaints go from 1,691 to 1,097 in the last two fiscal years, which run from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. But the drop is mostly because of a change in procedures that made it more possible to weed out complaints that couldn't be investigated due to factors such as a complainant moving to another state or lack of evidence.

Parven said all of that makes it hard to know whether Nevada's workers are being subjected to more or less discrimination than in previous years.

Ramadan said there is "pervasive and subtle" discrimination in Nevada and nationwide that makes the commission on civil rights and its state committees more important than ever.

Still, during a recent conference call for the commission's Western region -- Nevada and eight other states -- Sanchez spoke of his frustrations with Washington, which he said was hampering work on documenting discrimination statewide, particularly in the fast-growing south.

The conference call was made to introduce John Traszina, a new regional director based in Los Angeles.

In Nevada, Sanchez said the lack of funds trickling down from Washington makes it hard for the state committee to work on projects such as the report on discrimination by employers, landlords and police, the first of its kind for the state.

But he also said, during the conference call, that he had yet to finish the proposal for the report, which was announced 1 1/2 years ago.

Afterward, he allowed that he "should have been more aggressive" in following through on the idea.

The report would be the result of data gathering from official agencies and public hearings, tasks that are part of the agency's charge in its national office and state committees.

If completed, it would be the first such action by the committee since 1991, when hearings led to a report on police-community relations in Reno, Sanchez said.

Sanchez has been with the state committee for nearly 15 years, he said. He is serving his third year as chairman.

"We've got to get the word out to the public more," Sanchez said. "I can certainly say mea culpa."

Ramadan said one area of Nevada's public life where discrimination exists is in employment opportunities for minorities.

"Some companies have embraced diversity and inclusion, and some are giving it lip service," he said. "Is there a glass ceiling for people of color in the corporate sector?"

Punam Mathur, MGM Mirage senior vice president of corporate diversity and community affairs, said she thought it was "too simplistic" to think in terms of a glass ceiling.

The challenges for the corporate sector include getting the word out to valley high schools that jobs in hotels and casinos "are more than dealing cards and cleaning rooms," she said.

Mathur's company employs 42,000 people, about half of whom come from the main minority groups.

As for higher-level positions, she said a little less than a third of the company's managers and above are minorities.

Mathur's office was created in response to NAACP pressure on the casino in 2001, when the local chapter pushed for more minority hires and contractors, as well as a $100 million investment program in west Las Vegas that was eventually rejected.

Similar positions have been created at other casinos and the American Gaming Association has formed a diversity task force to look at minority employment.

Tony Sanchez -- no relation to David Sanchez -- is a member of the state committee to the civil rights commission and until recently was the president of the local Latin Chamber of Commerce.

He said the state's largest minority group -- Hispanics, now an estimated 22 percent of the population -- face what he called "economic discrimination."

This includes obtaining access to capital such as homeowner loans, he said.

He said the committee's job should be to "put everybody on the same level as possible."

But Tom Pilla, a 34-year veteran of the civil rights commission's Western region, said Nevada isn't the only state where local arms of the agency have been less than active in pursuing that goal.

"I don't think people look to the state advisory committees, because they don't know they're out there," said Pilla, one of two civil rights analysts in the Western regional office in Los Angeles.

Mathur said she was not aware of Nevada's committee to the agency.

Dean Ishman, elected in November to his second two-year term as president of the Las Vegas branch of the NAACP, said he had also never heard of the state committee.

"To be perfectly honest, I didn't know about the local branch," he said.

"I wish I did, because I've always called the national office" for information on agencies that handle different types of discrimination complaints, he said.

"I don't know why they haven't contacted us to let us know they're here ... (The committee) could be another tool and resource that we can use," Ishman said.

The regional conference call Dec. 10 came just days after the commission's national chairwoman, Mary Frances Berry, an Independent, and Vice Chairman Cruz Reynoso, a Democrat, both stepped down. Both were replaced by Republicans. Berry had served on the commission for 25 years, 12 of those as chairman.

The flurry of changes prompted an examination of what the executive-level office has achieved since its founding in 1957, and what its future may be.

The new chairman, 41-year-old attorney Gerald A. Reynolds, has been quoted as saying affirmative action is a "big lie," prompting some to wonder if he would be aggressive in pursuing discrimination.

Pilla said the agency has changed greatly over time. "It's been like night and day," he said, recalling the period before the Reagan era when his office handled four states with 10 employees. Now, he said, it oversees nine states with five employees.

In the recent call, state committee chairmen echoed such concerns, saying they were not supported by the national office and hoped things would change soon.

Several committees have not been able to meet face to face for some time because of a lack of funds -- including Nevada's, which has been meeting by conference calls for at least a year, Sanchez said.

State committee members serve on a volunteer basis.

Sanchez also said the lack of support was not just financial. He said a letter he sent to Berry shortly before the November elections on allegations of voter registration fraud in Las Vegas never got a response.

Traszina said he understood Sanchez's frustration, but underscored the importance of getting work done anyway.

He said it was important to collaborate with other institutions "in lieu of getting more funds."

"When we take our message to D.C., we want to have something to show," he said.

"I realize it's a chicken or egg thing ... and you can hardly put out a product if you have no resources. But that's what I want to encourage," Traszina said.

Sanchez adopted a similar position in the days after the conference call.

"I'm thinking to hell with the money," he said.

"I'm going to look at different ways of approaching things."