Staffers accused of abuse win back their jobs
Twice in the past three years, the state was ordered to reinstate an employee fired after an internal investigation found that the worker had abused one of Colorado’s most vulnerable citizens.
In one case, the victim was an adult with severe disabilities allegedly covered with a blanket and kicked at Pueblo Regional Center, and in the other, it was a teenager whose head was slammed to the floor in a youth detention center.
Both employees appealed to the State Personnel Board and won their jobs back, an outcome the Colorado Department of Human Services hopes to avoid in the future with new legislation on the way to Gov. John Hickenlooper.
“We don’t think we should be giving a person multiple chances to abuse a person,” said Sarah Wager, the director of administrative solutions for the state human services department. “This is a bill that we feel is really critical to protecting the vulnerable people in our care.”
The department runs 19 residential facilities for youths, elderly veterans, and people with mental illness or severe physical and mental disabilities.
Current law allows for terminating or suspending state employees when they are charged with various criminal offenses, but the human services department has struggled to fire workers who are not criminally charged but are involved in “an egregious incident of mistreatment,” according to the synopsis of House Bill 1065. Case law over
the years has led to multiple layers of “progressive discipline,” meaning state employees can get several chances to make mistakes.
“Where that falls short for us is when there are cases of egregious abuse,” Wager said.
The Colorado Constitution says state employees shall hold their jobs “until reaching retirement age” but can be dismissed for incompetence, unwillingness to perform their duties or a “final conviction of a felony or any other offense which involves moral turpitude.”
Melissa Lorenzo, an employee at Pueblo Regional Center, was fired after another employee reported that Lorenzo had placed a blanket over the head of a man with severe disabilities and kicked him after he had kicked her, according to state personnel board records.
She was terminated from the troubled center in 2015, the same year other alleged abuses included a resident performing a sexual act in exchange for a soda and another burned with a blowdryer in an attempt to raise her body temperature, according to a federal investigation.
Pueblo County sheriff’s officials investigated numerous reports of abuse but had difficulty gathering evidence from the center’s residents, many of whom are nonverbal. The center director resigned. Eight employees resigned or were terminated, and another eight were disciplined.
Lorenzo denied the allegations and another employee backed her up. She was never criminally charged. When she appealed her termination, the state personnel board — composed of employeeelected and governor-appointed lawyers, human resources experts and union professionals — said the state did not prove Lorenzo had committed the abuse.
She still works at Pueblo Regional Center but no longer has direct contact with residents, human services officials said.
In the other case, Fulton Rushing, an employee at a Colorado Springs youth detention center, appealed to the personnel board after he was fired following an altercation with a boy in lock-up.
The youth was shouting obscenities and gang jargon before Rushing put him in handcuffs and led him to a holding cell, where the fight escalated. Rushing was accused of throwing the handcuffed youth to the floor in an attempt to keep him from injuring others. With no hands to break his fall, the teen’s head slammed the floor and he started bleeding from his nose and mouth. The youth was taken to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with a concussion.
Rushing was reinstated by the personnel board, which said a more appropriate discipline would be a demotion and a 5 percent cut in pay. Rushing ended up settling with the human services department instead of returning to work. The state paid him $117,000.
The legislation states that the Department of Human Services can fire an employee found by the department to have abused, neglected or exploited a “vulnerable person.”
The state personnel board requested the inclusion of a sentence in the proposed law that says it will not affect state employees’ “constitutional or statutory due process rights,” including to appeal terminations, said board director Dana Shea-Reid. The board insisted on the addition to make clear that the state can’t “just get rid of people,” she said. “They still have rights.”
Annually, the board receives about 300 appeals related to grievances, disciplinary actions and terminations. Cases are heard by an administrative law judge and reviewed by the sixmember personnel board.
The legislation received final approval from the Senate last week after already passing in the House.