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OGDEN - Mayor Matthew Godfrey and top administrators have been protecting - even rewarding - a division manager who downloaded pornography on his work computer, sexually harassed female employees and verbally abused subordinates, the city's fired human-resources manager alleges.
Dean Martinez said he was fired in early December when the administration learned he was about to "blow the whistle" to an outside investigator on the alleged abuses.
Since then, Martinez said he has filed a complaint with the Utah Labor Commission and sent to the City Council a lengthy statement detailing his accusations.
His state complaint also alleges that he and other minority and female division managers were paid less and treated differently than white male division managers.
Godfrey on Jan. 22nd called Martinez's accusations against him and other administrators untrue.
"Some . . . are flat-out wrong. They are fabricated. There has been no cover-up," the mayor said, adding that every complaint against the division manager, whom The Salt Lake Tribune declines to name because no action has been taken against him, has been investigated.
"The appropriate outcome was decided by the manager or [city] attorney," Godfrey said. The mayor said he has never been involved in any of the decisions.
City Attorney Gary Williams, meanwhile, said he could not comment on the substance of Martinez's allegations because Martinez based them on records protected from public disclosure.
"Dean's abuse of those records is a big part of why he's no longer here," Williams said.
In the statement given to the City Council, Martinez accuses the officials - Godfrey, Chief Administrative Officer John Patterson, Williams and his own former boss, Management Services Director Mark Johnson - of negligence in their "duties to protect all of Ogden City's employees."
And he called the city-run pornography investigation a "farce."
"I could not look the other way," Martinez told a reporter.
He told the City Council: "This was not one isolated incident; it's a pattern that I can document began in 2000, and has not stopped."
Ax falls in December
Martinez was fired less than a week before he was to meet with a Salt Lake City attorney whom the city had hired to investigate his complaint that Johnson, and perhaps other department heads, discriminate against women and minority division managers.
However, Martinez did not tell his bosses that he also was gathering information about a manager's alleged pornography downloads and sexual harassment. He intended to bring that up with the investigator as well.
Patterson, as the city's top administrator, said last month that when the city found that out - and discovered Martinez had taken home personnel files that were none of his business - he was fired.
Martinez acknowledges that he was not forthcoming at first about what he intended to tell the investigator, but defends taking home an investigative file on the alleged harasser.
"One of H.R.'s [human resource's] jobs is to ensure a work environment free of harassment," Martinez said. "I had legitimate reasons to take that file."
Martinez, hired in fall 2004, said that Ogden City generally takes sexual harassment and pornography seriously.
For instance, Martinez said, another employee was promptly fired when evidence showed he had downloaded pornography onto his work computer.
But the division manager - accused several times over the years of harassing women with sexual innuendo and suggestive statements and of bullying employees - kept his job after the pornography was found, said Martinez.
It was a pattern that Martinez said puzzled him.
"They [city administrators] were clearly more loyal to [the manager] than to the women employees."
Pattern of complaints
Three former female subordinates of the manager corroborated many of Martinez's allegations.
One, who quit fewer than three months after she was hired in the fall of 2000 - only to be lured back to the same job after the mayor went to her home asking her to reconsider - told The Tribune that her manager frequently complimented her looks and her legs.
He would drop by her home uninvited - she was separated from her husband, she said - offering to help with home-improvement projects. Once, he suggested they get a hotel room while in Logan for meetings, she said. When she complained to his supervisor, her manager was chastised and he apologized, she said.
Martinez said that the manager's personnel file shows that his department boss warned him that if the behavior recurred, he would be fired.
But that department boss - who no longer is with the city - also told the woman that if she would act or dress differently, his subordinate's behavior would stop, she said. A long-time businesswoman, she was offended and quit the next day.
At Godfrey's urging, she returned, but quit again after 10 months, saying she endured verbal abuse from the manager who earlier had been reprimanded for sexual harassment.
Martinez said a second subordinate of that same division manager also left the city because of sexual harassment, and two others who complained of hostile work conditions in the past two years were transferred to jobs outside of the manager's division.
Sexual harrassment was reported as recently as last year. An employee complained that the division manager was romantically involved with someone in the manager's own chain of command. Patterson investigated, and the girlfriend was terminated last June, Martinez said.
Porn found?
In March 2005, Martinez contends, the city's information technology department found evidence that the manager had downloaded pornographic pictures from the Internet onto his city computer during work hours.
"I tried to get him fired," Martinez said, pointing out that city policy forbids such use of city computers.
Instead, the management-services director, Johnson, allowed the manager's supervisor to conduct an investigation.
"No results were shared with H.R., and nothing was put in [the employee's] file," Martinez said in his statement to the council.
Martinez said he personally told Godfrey about the pornography to ensure the mayor understood the gravity of the situation.
It was after the pornography episode, and after the transfers of two employees who accused the manager of hostility, that the manager was named Ogden City's Employee of the Month, Martinez said, adding that the honor rankled many city workers because such designations had been reserved for employees - not managers.
The anti-discrimination division of the Utah Labor Commission would not confirm that Dean Martinez has filed a complaint against an Ogden City manager. However, case manager Harold Stephens said the division is the first stop for an employee who believes he or she has been discriminated against because of race, sex or membership in another protected class. The state also investigates for the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
"Our function is to resolve and settle claims brought to our attention," Stephens said.
At any time in the investigative process - it can take six months to two years - the employee or employer can ask permission to file a lawsuit instead.
Meanwhile, Martinez's statement to the City Council on the matter will go nowhere because city administrators handle personnel issues.