Investigative Group

Big Bucks For Fed Who Threatened Boss, Called Witness A KKKer Who Should Be Shot

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A high-level federal public housing employee and union president who wanted a bigger desk got a massive financial payout instead of punishment after threatening to beat up his female boss and calling a witness a member of the Ku Klux Klan who should be shot.

When the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was renovating its Cleveland office in 2010, Rayland D. Young, a $111,000-a-year civil servant in charge of “revitalizing” housing projects, became so enraged a colleague had a larger desk he told his female supervisor he was “going to mop the floor with your ass.”

Young said his smaller desk must have been because HUD was racist. An arbiter later described Young’s outburst as one of a series of “protracted raging rants,” which included calling bosses liars, cheaters, thieves and “verbal assaults.”

HUD officials did not appear concerned a female manager had been physically threatened in the workplace because Young subsequently got the minimum allowed punishment for insulting language and threatening behavior — a five-day suspension.

Young was astonished there were any consequences for his threats. He was the elected president of the American Federation of Government Employees union local, and used union resources to fight his five-day suspension all the way to the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA).

He argued there should be no penalty at all and threats of violence against women were allowed since he was acting as union president at the time, not as an ordinary aggrieved employee.

An FLRA “arbitrator found that the grievant was ’conducting [U]nion business,’” which partially excused the behavior. But the arbiter didn’t buy Young’s excuse it was the kind of “robust” discussion permitted in union bargaining, noting Young’s behavior displayed “more than speech or aggressive conversation” or “locker room talk’” and included a real threat of physical harm he had the capacity to carry out.

Young again used union resources he controlled to appeal the arbitrators’ decision, filings show, continuing to argue everyone involved was racist.

Since the initial arbitrator partially agreed with his argument about doing union business by screaming at his supervisor, Young said the punishment must be lessened. The FLRA declined, noting HUD was already being remarkably lenient and he could have faced far worse for even a fraction of the charges.

That’s when things got worse. In the hall outside the FLRA proceeding, Young threatened a witness who had just told arbiters of these events.

Just after Gregory Darr, executive director of the Coshocton Metropolitan Housing Authority and a HUD client, had testified, “there was a recess in the proceeding. According to Mr. Darr, while he was walking down the hallway, about 25-30 feet away from Mr. Young, Mr. Young shouted from immediately outside the door of the hearing room, “[y]ou are a racist. You are a member of the KKK, and you should be shot.”

At that point, HUD officials said Young’s shouted comment only “bordered” on threatening behavior, but nevertheless, because it was tampering with a witness, moved to fire him.

HUD officials took a statement from Young, who claimed Darr made the whole thing up. Jimmy Davis, one of Young’s fellow HUD employees and a union official, claimed he was present at the time outside the hearing room and no confrontation had occurred. Management later concluded Davis was actually away checking his email.

This “wholly undermined Mr. Davis’ credibility as a witness and, as a result, [managers] determined that Mr. Young engaged in the conduct,” documents show.

Young appealed the new charges, but arbitrators found he was lying, Davis was covering it up, and Darr, whose agency HUD was supposed to help, was telling the truth. Young then filed a lawsuit challenging his firing.

It might have seemed like a hopeless quest to expect no consequences for repeated violent threats and rabid accusations of racism inside of HUD, but Young’s expectations were correct.

In February 2013, judges for the United States Court of Appeals For The Federal Circuit ruled federal civil service protections required Young be reinstated, for two separate reasons, either of which alone would have been enough.

It was unfair investigators had talked to additional witnesses who further confirmed an aspect of what was in the firing paperwork — that Darr appeared “shaken” — after talking to Young, judges said, because he didn’t have an opportunity to rebut that. They acknowledged he had plenty of opportunity during the disciplinary hearings — some of which were four days long — but Young didn’t also have the opportunity during the investigative stage as well as the adjudicative one, they said.

Secondly, the judges suspected HUD management and arbitrators might have wrongfully thought past incidents shed some light on the newest allegations, ruling they might have let their conclusion be impacted by the fact that the allegations were consistent with the “behavior pattern that has followed the course of his presidency at the Cleveland HUD agency office.”

The judges’ reasoning relied on evidentiary rules they admitted did not apply, saying “while the Federal Rules of Evidence do not apply to Board hearings, we have found them to be a helpful guide.”

Not only did the court rule in his favor, it ordered the government to pay for his suit against it. Young received $109,000 from the government in 2013 for his legal expenses. The legal fees were awarded by a “Merits Panel” under the Equal Access to Justice Act, which is intended to reward victims of “unreasonable government conduct.”

Nothing was done, however, for the HUD employees who “expressed elevated concern in the possibility that Mr. Young’s unpredictable behavior will become violent… They are afraid of him… No one should come into work fearful of what might happen if Mr. Young shows up and gets angry,” the appeals court judges were told.

So rather than return him to work after the court case, HUD appears to have paid him off to retire, giving him a second monetary award on top of the $109,000.

A November, 2014, court filing says that “petitioner and the respondent have engaged in settlement discussions” and the “settlement agreement in [sic] currently under review by the United States Office of Personnel Management … Should settlement be reached, Petitioner will withdraw his Petition.”

A month later, Young withdrew his petition.

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