Former employees say Missouri Department of Transportation leaders preyed on older workers
Deanna McClurg’s 27-year career with the Missouri Department of Transportation ended as it had started.
The 55-year-old St. Joseph woman’s career went the way that most nearly three-decade government jobs go: She started at the bottom and worked her way up. In 1984, at age 25, she started working on a maintenance crew in Faucett, Missouri. It was an entry-level job, patching holes in highways and clearing brush from roadsides.
In 1999, she was promoted to regional maintenance supervisor, which put her in charge of roughly a dozen employees who maintained roadways in part of Platte and Buchanan counties. She was one of the first, if not the first, woman to assume this role with MoDOT.
By 2008, her pay had peaked at $52,299. Then, the recession came. No state agency was more affected than MoDOT, which was hit with a double whammy of declining state and federal revenues. In 2010, an initiative called the Bold 5-Year Direction identified ways to save money and avoid personnel cuts. Less than a year later, policymakers realized that the Bold 5-Year Direction wasn’t bold enough. So they came up with the Bolder 5-Year Direction, a plan heavy on staff cuts that proposed the elimination of 1,200 positions.
On September 15, 2011, McClurg learned that she would have to interview to keep her supervisory job. She figured the odds were good that she could retain her position given nearly three decades of work without one disciplinary write-up. She had questioned the wisdom of some tenets of the Bolder 5-Year Direction during staff meetings but told her superiors during her interview that she wanted to stay with the department. About two weeks later, McClurg was demoted to the maintenance crew, working alongside employees she had supervised for years.
McClurg discovered that all nine maintenance-supervisor positions that she had thought she was qualified for in 2011 were filled by younger men, five of whom had disciplinary records. One man had received a warning for committing a safety violation. Another was once suspended for making racially insensitive remarks to a black employee immediately following a MoDOT diversity-training session in 2010. A third was suspended for attending, but not reporting to his superiors, a work party in Platte City at which a female MoDOT employee dressed and danced provocatively.
McClurg’s demotion came with a $10,000 pay cut. She patched potholes for about 17 months before retiring in April 2013. In July of that year, she sued the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission, a governor-appointed bipartisan panel that oversees MoDOT, claiming age and gender discrimination. (McClurg was 52 at the time of her demotion.)
McClurg’s case isn’t an isolated matter for MoDOT. Several other lawsuits making similar allegations of age and gender discrimination have been leveled against MoDOT since the Bolder 5-Year Direction, many emerging from the agency’s Kansas City office. Because of settlements and legal fees, the downsizing has generated a $5 million expense for a state department under serious financial pressure.
McClurg’s age-discrimination trial started November 3 in Buchanan County. Among the evidence that her attorney, Rik Siro, summoned from MoDOT was the “Buzzard List,” a document kept by her boss, Don Wichern, and named after a predatory hawk that targets easy prey. The document sorted regional employees by age, placing the ones closest to retirement at the top. McClurg’s lawsuit claims that it was a hit list of older employees whom MoDOT would get rid of in favor of younger workers.
During opening arguments, Siro told jurors that his client was demoted in part because she had asked managers tough questions about the Bolder 5-Year Direction. “Ms. McClurg’s career as a supervisor was over,” Siro said. “She was crushed.”
Attorneys representing MoDOT argued that the department had to make drastic staff cuts, reducing 45 maintenance-supervisor positions in northwest Missouri to 17. MoDOT also dismissed accusations that the Buzzard List was a hit list, claiming instead that it was crafted to prepare the department for retirements. An attorney for MoDOT said that although McClurg had a clean personnel record, she didn’t rise to the top of applicants because upper management didn’t believe that she would embrace the challenge of leading staff through drastic department changes.
“There was nobody out to get Ms. McClurg … there just weren’t enough jobs to go around,” said Nikki Howell, a Kansas City attorney representing MoDOT. “Ms. McClurg wasn’t a bad supervisor; she just wasn’t the best.”
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Another case against MoDOT with similar accusations of discrimination is scheduled to begin December 1 in the same Buchanan County courtroom.
Like McClurg, Elaine Justus had to reinterview for her position (public affairs manager) after the implementation of the Bolder 5-Year Direction. According to Justus’ lawsuit, she was replaced by a woman 23 years younger. (Justus was 62 at the time of her demotion.) When Justus complained to Wichern, the keeper of the Buzzard List, she was told to leave his office, and her desk was moved into a storage room with a history of mold-contamination issues. (The Pitch confirmed these charges through a Missouri Sunshine Law request.)
In Jackson County, Mark Stock also has an age-discrimination lawsuit pending against the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission. It is scheduled to go to trial February 23.
Stock, who started at MoDOT in 1983, worked as an engineer in Jackson and Clay counties until he was replaced by a man 15 years younger than he was. Stock was demoted to inspector; he applied for other positions within MoDOT but was passed over for younger employees.
Stock referred questions to his attorney, Marie Gockel, who declined to comment, due to her client’s pending case.
In similar discrimination cases, Gockel has represented other former MoDOT employees who lost positions following the Bolder 5-Year Direction. Some have been settled out of court.
Sharon Taegel, who had worked for MoDOT since 1985, lost her position of assistant to the Kansas City district engineer in 2011. Taegel’s lawsuit outlines a systematic replacement of female employees in the Kansas City office with younger male workers, as part of a “longstanding good old boy network.”
Her lawsuit says the Kansas City office had nine women in senior-management positions prior to the Bolder 5-Year Direction, and only two afterward.
Taegel claimed that when she had to reapply for her job, her superiors told her that the June 27, 2011, interview was merely a courtesy. Taegel’s position was given to a younger man. Taegel settled with the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission for $625,000 on May 21, 2013.
The commission also settled a discrimination claim brought by Susan Nelson, who was a project manager in Kansas City until 2011, for $634,000. Nelson claimed that she had investigated allegations of sexual harassment leveled in 2009 against James Shipley, a MoDOT supervisor in Kansas City, who was later promoted.
Nelson remains on MoDOT’s payroll under paid administrative leave until March 31, 2015.
In defending itself, MoDOT has paid employment-law firm Littler Mendelson nearly $3 million since 2012, according to state records.
MoDOT declined to discuss specifics of these cases with The Pitch. However, the department denies that retirement eligibility and age were part of the calculations when making personnel decisions.
“It was inevitable that some individuals who lost positions would question the decisions that were made,” MoDOT spokeswoman Sally Oxenhandler tells The Pitch.
The settlements and legal bills are a fraction of MoDOT’s $2 billion operating budget, but they come at a time when the department has made substantial cutbacks in road maintenance and construction projects.
Missouri voters dealt the department another blow August 5, when they rejected a constitutional amendment to increase sales taxes by three-quarters of a cent.
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MoDOT has kept information about the employment litigation quiet. The Pitch contacted key members of transportation committees in the Missouri House and Senate, and they were unaware of the lawsuits or the costs associated with them.
“What you’re telling me is the first I have heard of it,” said Glen Kolkmeyer, a Bates City Republican who is vice chairman of the House Transportation Committee.
Missouri lawmakers are less concerned with MoDOT’s day-to-day operations. That responsibility falls to the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission, which was created in part to reduce the influence of legislators who might try to prioritize transportation projects in their own districts. Stephen Miller, a Kansas City lawyer who chairs the commission, told The Pitch that he can’t comment on litigation against MoDOT.
Lawmakers, however, did approve Amendment 7 to go before voters in August. Proponents of the 10-year sales-tax increase expected it to fetch $5 billion over its lifetime. State Sen. Jason Holsman, a Kansas City Democrat, stamped his approval on the measure.
“I wasn’t necessarily in favor of the taxing mechanism, but I was in favor of letting the people decide,” Holsman tells The Pitch. “We have a serious problem, a shortfall in transportation, and we don’t want to let our assets deteriorate to the level that it’s unsafe.”
Kolkmeyer adds, “MoDOT is going to, in the next few years, run out of money. All they’re going to be able to do is maintain what we have. As far as new bridges, new roads expanding and rebuilding I-70, there will be no money for that. They pretty much already put a stop to new construction.”
MoDOT’s budget woes aren’t limited to road projects. Kansas City and Jackson County have tried to leverage MoDOT money for rail projects, notably the streetcar expansion, which failed on the same day as Amendment 7.
How did MoDOT get here?
Since 2004, MoDOT’s budget has been propped up with temporary funding sources. In 2004, Missouri voters approved bonds to support construction projects, primarily bridges. That funding was supplemented by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the federal stimulus package passed at the height of the recession). Most of those funds are now gone, leaving MoDOT to rely on such typical revenue streams as federal dollars (which are becoming more scarce), fuel taxes (the lowest rate in the country), license fees and vehicle sales taxes. Those funding sources produce about the same amount of money today as they did in the early 1990s.
Kevin Keith, the director of MoDOT in 2011, hatched the Bolder 5-Year Direction. (Citing health reasons, he resigned suddenly in 2013.) In addition to eliminating 1,200 positions (20 percent of MoDOT’s workforce), the agency shut down 131 facilities and surplussed 740 equipment units. The reductions were supposed to save $512 million, which would be redirected to road and bridge projects.
The cuts weren’t enough to cover MoDOT’s expenses. So the department sought another temporary funding boost in Amendment 7, which voters rejected.
The Bolder 5-Year Direction has pared down MoDOT’s expenses, but rather than producing savings to meet MoDOT’s needs, it has resulted in litigation that has not only cost the organization millions of dollars but has also chipped away at employee morale.
Earlier this year, MoDOT paid Phillips & Associates about $300,000 to conduct an employee survey. Half of MoDOT’s employees responded; many of the results weren’t favorable.
Several employees complained about salaries. They believed that promotions were not based on merit. They also doubted whether they would recommend MoDOT as a place to work. This was a sharp decline from 2010, the last time that MoDOT quizzed its workers.
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The Pitch obtained a copy of the survey through an open-records request. Here’s a sample of the responses:
• “I feel like there’s a lot of favoritism at this shop. There are certain people that don’t like to get dirty so they get cleaner jobs. I get a lot of the dirty jobs — I think this is crap.”
• “MoDOT spend too much time and money trying to reinvent the wheel. MoDOT has too many people in supervisor and upper management positions that have no clue what they’re doing.”
• “I am happy at MoDOT however I do feel promotions are based on buddy system and favoritism.”
• “Asking work location, years of service, education, race and sex are nice questions used to figure out what employee is filling out the survey.”
• “The only way to get promoted is to step on others and care only about yourself instead of the team.”
• “We need raises.”
• “More pay.”
• “Too many quality employees are leaving MODOT due to no/very little increases.”
• “I have never seen morale so low at MODOT.”
• “MODOT would be better off to outsource their hiring to get rid of the buddy system.”
• “It’s still almost impossible to move up at MODOT unless you kiss butt and go along with everything that MODOT says, even if it isn’t the right way to do something. MODOT still wastes money every day even though they say they are broke.”
In January 2010, someone posted an anonymous comment to a blog kept by a MoDOT supervisor claiming that department leaders were unfair to certain employees based on race.
Assistant district engineer Chris Redline asked employees, including Antonio Bryant, a black maintenance supervisor who had worked at MoDOT since 1981, whether employees really believed that race was an issue in the agency’s workplace. Bryant and other employees confirmed that it was an issue.
According to a lawsuit later filed by Bryant, Redline took the feedback personally and said the employees made him look like a liar. MoDOT acknowledges that Redline discussed the blog with Bryant but denies the characterization of his reaction.
Bryant, like others, had to reapply for his job. According to his lawsuit, Redline, who works in the Kansas City MoDOT office, told another employee that he was concerned about Bryant because of the race conversation.
In August 2011, Bryant, 51, lost his position to a younger employee and was rejected for other positions for which he had applied.
In October 2013, MoDOT settled Bryant’s lawsuit for $145,000.
Meanwhile, McClurg turned down a settlement offer and went to trial. For most of last week, a jury of nine women and three men heard testimony and evidence from her case on the sixth floor of the downtown St. Joseph courtroom.
By the end of the week, jurors needed two hours to find MoDOT responsible for discriminating against McClurg. Jurors awarded her $850,000.
