A retired budget analyst at Denver International Airport has sued the city and county of Denver, alleging she was racially discriminated against after she complained that federal money was being mishandled by her supervisors.
Pamela Armstead’s lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court, does not specify what federal dollars she believes were misappropriated.
Her attorney, Anne Sulton, declined to provide details of her client’s budget concerns because Armstead is ill and could not give her consent to disclose the information.
DIA spokesman Laura Coale declined to comment on the merits of the lawsuit because litigation is pending. She also declined to discuss Armstead’s personnel issues.
The lawsuit names DIA capital improvement program manager Donald Wood and Kim Day, manager of Denver’s department of aviation.
“In August 2010, during several staff meetings attended by over a dozen employees, Dr. Armstead informed Mr. Wood of her concerns about the manner in which millions of dollars in federal government money were being moved between and among various budget accounts,” the suit says. “She informed Mr. Wood that the manner in which the money was being moved around appeared to be inconsistent with the strict federal guidelines accompanying the federal money being sent to DIA and that it was her belief, given her 15 years’ experience working with budget matters at DIA, that auditors and others might consider his actions improper.”
Armstead, who is African-American, claims that after her warnings she was mistreated by Wood, who referred to her as “you people” and demanded she return to work to complete a task he didn’t know how to do while she was making funeral arrangements for her mother.
Armstead’s mother died in September. When Armstead returned to work after the funeral, she discovered she had been removed from her office and assigned “a less desirable workplace,” the suit says.
On Oct. 25, Armstead told Wood he was treating her like “a slave” and he suspended her, claiming she had misreported the time she took off work when her mother died, and she was forced to leave DIA, the suit says.
“After consultation with her health care providers, Dr. Armstead had no choice but to quit her job,” the suit says. “Dr. Armstead chose the retirement route in an effort to mitigate her damages.”
