Human Rights Commision holds “bizarre” meeting Thursday (video)

MASON CITY – What little remains of the Mason City Human Rights Commission met Thursday at City Hall.

In what was described as a “bizarre” meeting by the Human Rights Commission’s former Chairman – Dean Genth, who was in attendance – the current chairman – Steve Palmer, an insurance salesman – took shots at former Human Rights Director Lionel Foster (he mocked “confidentiality of cases”), Councilman Alex Kuhn (for not helping with community outreach) and bragged that the commission was now undertaking tasks the former Human Rights agency never did – community education and outreach – with a smaller budget, no paid employees – and no legal basis for existing in the first place.

The commission met with six members mostly in attendance. One was late, and another left early. Palmer, in some detail, described that two commission members, Matt Dodge and Brian McNamara, were “seriously ill” and may not return to the commission for months. Dodge had, months ago, indicated he would resign from the commission to divert all his energies to beating his cancer diagnosis – but has apparently never done so, nor attended a meeting in months. (Dodge’s wife, in late 2013, had called the NIT newsroom to divulge his health situation and his intentions.) Palmer stated that “Both Matt and Brian are … they may not be back for awhile. I talked to Brian yesterday … he’s, he’s got some things that are going to take him awhile to get over, maybe another 6 months.”

When asked later by a citizen who attended the meeting how McNamara was doing, Palmer said he couldn’t discuss it “or it would be a HIPPA violation.”

Palmer said that regarding “community outreach and education”, the commission “last quarter” had “worked with landlords” and that “this quarter” (which began July 1, 2014) the commission would work with “small businesses”.  It was mentioned by the commission that they may hold meetings at the offices of the Mason City Chamber of Commerce.  Palmer claimed that “we have worked with landlords” and that “we had been requested on a couple of occasions by the state to do some outreach and we have done them.” Palmer named commissioner Ann Harty (another insurance salesman) to lead the outreach effort aimed at small businesses in the July through September time frame. “That leaves us with two months to do something,” in this quarter, Palmer stated. He then took a shot at Councilman Alex Kuhn for not providing the commission with a plan for that outreach (see video).  NIT was told that Kuhn had been asking Palmer about his plan to reach out to educate small businesses in Mason City about discrimination in the workplace, and Palmer had angrily scrawled out with a pen a few bullet points and delivered that note to Kuhn.

The commission “administratively dismissed” a case Thursday. Palmer had said earlier that referring to cases by their number only was a “perfect” way of maintaining confidentiality. He said that case number 91230 was a “probable cause” case that went to reconciliation, which failed. The claimant was, however, issued a right to sue (it was not disclosed who issued the right to sue letter). Friday morning, NIT was alerted from a credible source that the claimant in that case is an African-American woman who brought a complaint against Dimensional Graphics and its owner, Adam Gold. Last week, Gold finalized a deal with city hall for $250,000 in tax breaks – a deal said to have been brokered in large part by his close friend, Mayor Eric Bookmeyer, who has long been an enemy of the Mason City Human Rights Agency.

The commission also attempted to finalize plans for cleaning out the Human Rights Agency’s office. Last month, they had talked about how to “handle the law books, who might be interested in them and setting a time frame for disposal.”

The commission was questioned by four citizens who attended the meeting, including Genth. The commission denied that Diana Black, who they specifically named as “part-time” staff, was ever tasked with doing intake of cases from the public (NIT previously reported that the commission had designated her as the point person for taking intake of cases from the public). Commissioners claimed that all cases should go directly to Des Moines (home of the The Iowa Civil Rights Commission, which, in the beginning, was only going to assist or undertake cases from Mason City as-needed, and the Mason City Human Rights Agency would do intake of cases and investigate the cases it could handle). The commission also claimed that they removed all the information from the Human Rights web page on MasonCity.net because the information was “inaccurate”. The history of the agency narrative and pictures of former director Lionel Foster holding awards have been scrubbed away and deleted. All that has been left on the city’s website is the generic number to City Hall (which usually prompts a recording), and persons with inquiries should ask for Diana Black. Palmer – becoming more and more agitated – proclaimed during the sometimes-testy back-and-forth question and answer session that “we are not required to have a commission” in Mason City.

NIT was also told that a plaque honoring the many years of service for former administrative assistant Amy Simpson was delivered by a current Human Rights commissioner, to Simpson’s new place of employment. Simpson was not there to accept the plaque, and it was left there for her to pick up.

Watch video of entire meeting (question and answer session held later in the video, skip forward to view):

httpv://youtu.be/dPjyjBq50vU