The city of Denver should reinstate three employees fired from the Parks and Recreation Department for improperly processing payroll, a hearing officer has ruled.
Career Service hearing officer Bruce Plotkin also overturned a five-day suspension for a fourth employee.
All the employees had been responsible for processing payroll and had been disciplined in August 2007 for mistakes in how pay was administered throughout the parks department.
In a scathing 49-page ruling made public Friday, Plotkin found the city’s Parks and Recreation Department had improperly blamed the employees for the ongoing problems.
“Responsibility for errors may not be laid at the feet of those who execute their duties under a system where vague processes — coupled with faulty structure and oversight — invite just such errors,” Plotkin said in the ruling.
He ordered the city to modify the firing of Audra Mestas to a one-day suspension and to modify the firing of Laura Fuentes to a five-day suspension. He also reversed the firing of Patricia Salazar and ordered the city to modify the five-day suspension of Karen Sierra to a written reprimand.
“We’re talking with the city attorney’s office and the Career Service Authority to explore our options,” said Jill McGranahan, spokeswoman for the Parks and Recreation Department. “We disagree with the hearing officer’s ruling.”
Plotkin said the city had presented extensive testimony about the hiring of a sex offender who worked with children and had “presented several witnesses who referred obliquely to Mestas’ responsibility in that matter.”
But he said the city had not made it clear that Mestas had actually been fired for that issue and that her firing had been more related to payroll problems that were endemic throughout other city agencies.
Hugh Pixler, the lawyer representing the disciplined employees, said those who had been fired had seen their careers and lives put on hold since August.
“The hearing officer really understood that this was a weakness in management and that it was management’s fault,” Pixler said. “These ladies were being held to a different standard than other career-service employees, and they were put in an untenable position.”
Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com
