The governor’s office also said the state Human Resources Division investigated sexual-harassment and discrimination complaints against Michael this spring and “concluded that there were no legally supported grounds for disciplining the employees subject to the allegations.”
Under the reorganization, several bureaus or divisions within the department – personnel, budgeting, information technology – were folded into one division, which is now headed by the agency’s chief information-technology officer.
The Youth Services Division was eliminated. Adrianne Cotton, the agency’s government-relations officer, had her job eliminated and was laid off. She was among several women who made sexual-harassment complaints about Michael. Other employees on the “leadership team” were reassigned.
“Of the 12 leaders within the central office, eight of them had voiced concerns (about management) and six of them faced retaliation,” Shepherd told MTN News last week.
Shepherd said those conducting the assessment had been told the poor work environment was because many top Corrections officials didn’t support the justice-reinvestment initiatives and were resisting budget-cutting decisions.
“I explained that there was nothing further from the truth,” Shepherd said. “They’re the ones who initiated 90 percent of the (justice-reinvestment) proposals, in the past four years.”
Cotton told MTN news that staffers who had their jobs eliminated or reassigned had spent “countless hours” analyzing data and proposals that led to the justice-reinvestment plans, and that she wrote and acquired nearly $500,000 worth of grants to help the initiative.
At the Sept. 26 meeting, the leader of the climate assessment – a personnel officer from the Department of Environmental Quality – told people at the meeting they had poor communication, were resisting change, and hadn’t been welcoming to the new director as he learned the ropes, McKenzie said.
“Everyone was so angry, you could have cut the tension in the room,” McKenzie said. “The issue with change was the change of leadership style that was so totally ineffective, compared to the leadership style we had before. … (The assessment) was basically just a cover-up for the director.”
She told MTN News that many at the meeting thought the assessment’s conclusion was wrong – and that the real problem was poor leadership from Michael and Deputy Director Cynthia Wolken, who had been hired early this year.
Wolken, an attorney and former state senator from Missoula, carried several of the justice-reinvestment bills at the 2017 Legislature.
McKenzie, who was head of the agency’s Youth Services Division, had submitted her resignation two days before the meeting, after learning she’d been left out of the decision to close the Riverside Recovery and Reentry Program in Boulder – a program within the division she supervised.
She then learned that under the reorganization, she would have been laid off, because her division was eliminated.
McKenzie said she asked to be allowed the additional benefits available to someone who was laid off, rather than if they resigned. That request was denied.
Shepherd, McKenzie and others said they began losing faith in top management in the wake of two incidents and their aftermath: Harassment complaints brought against Michael early this year and the closure of the Youth Transition Center in Great Falls, a state facility for juvenile male offenders.
Shepherd, who had been the Corrections Department’s top personnel officer since 2014, believes her actions pursuing the internal harassment complaints led to her firing in August. She filed a discrimination complaint with the state Human Rights Bureau a week after her firing, making that claim. The bureau is investigating.
Shepherd said she went to Deputy Director Wolken in late February to complain about Michael’s “bad behaviors” toward a half-dozen female employees in the central office, saying he treated them in a “demeaning, degrading or patronizing fashion.”
Department policy requires that an investigation start within 10 days of a sexual-harassment complaint, Shepherd said.
But Shepherd said she had to ask Wolken twice over the next seven weeks before an investigation would begin.
Shepherd said the day after she checked the second time, in mid-April, she was removed from the selection committee choosing a new State Prison warden and relieved of her labor-relation duties.
The next month, Shepherd said was placed on administrative leave, accused of breaking state law by tape-recording a Feb. 28 meeting with an employee without the employee’s knowledge.
“It was essentially cooked up,” she said of the charge.
That meeting involved Shepherd, Michael, Wolken and McKenzie – who was being questioned about her role in the potential closure of the Youth Transition Center in Great Falls.
Shepherd said it was standard practice to record meetings with employees who might be disciplined, and that when she arrived in the office for the interview, she assumed that Michael and Wolken had informed McKenzie the discussion would be recorded.
McKenzie told MTN News she had not been told about the recording.
The department formally fired Shepherd in early August, because she had allegedly broken the law by recording an employee without permission.
The governor’s office told MTN News Shepherd was “terminated for cause” and had no further comment, saying the matter is under litigation.
The decision to close the Youth Transition Center as a budget-cutting move was made by the director in early February, McKenzie and Shepherd said.
But two days later, when McKenzie was scheduled to go to Great Falls to tell YTC staff of the decision, she said Michael called her and Shepherd and said to cancel the meeting. Union officials representing the employees had called the governor’s office, which said it had not signed off on the decision, McKenzie said.
McKenzie said Michael and Wolken then tried to take back what they’d said at the meeting two days earlier, asserting they had not ordered the closure and that McKenzie had improperly notified YTC leaders about it.
“I was in shock,” McKenzie said. “I said, `That is not at all what I remember.’ We had clear statements of closing YTC and we talked about the dates.”
Shepherd said she had drafted the letters telling employees about the closure, at the direction of Michael – but that the director then tried to insinuate that Shepherd had “gone rogue” and acted without his permission.
With YTC’s future uncertain, McKenzie sent an email to probation officers who handled juveniles, saying they shouldn’t place any more kids at the Great Falls facility while its status was under review.
McKenzie said that email caused her to be called on the carpet by Michael and Wolken for allegedly telling people the facility would be closed – and, was the subject of the Feb. 28 meeting that led to the accusation that Shepherd had illegally taped it.
McKenzie said her email did not say YTC would be closed and that she was not disciplined for the email. And, less than three months later, the agency announced that YTC would be closed after all.
“For me, personally, there was an extreme lack of communication and a lack of respect from the director’s level on down,” McKenzie said last week. “There was no strategic planning, there was no working together. It made it very difficult to be a cohesive team when there was no teamwork from the leadership.”
Story by Mike Dennison, MTN News
Tomorrow: Why and how the agency decided to close a well-regarded correctional program for women offenders.