Martinez Reinstated as City Clerk : Politics: Official fired after sexual harassment allegations wins his job back when council decides not to pursue the case. He has filed a claim for $125,000.

Elias (Lee) Martinez, who was fired as city clerk in June, won his job back Friday when the City Council chose not to intervene, ending a widely criticized sexual harassment investigation that has been mired in the city bureaucracy for more than two years.

Although Martinez will return to his old office Monday morning with the sexual harassment charges against him formally dropped, several issues raised by the case will take longer to resolve.

Some officials plan to review the allegations again to determine what went awry in the investigation and others have called for more clear-cut sexual harassment standards in City Hall.

Martinez, meanwhile, has filed a claim against the city seeking more than $125,000 in back pay and attorney fees as well as other unspecified damages.

When he returns to work next week, Martinez said, he plans to call a staff meeting and pledge to the workers that he has no interest in retaliation against those who complained about him. He said he also intends to be more businesslike and less friendly in the office so he does not offend any workers.

“I don’t deny that I might have complimented a woman on her appearance,” he said. “I compliment men too. But those statements were being taken out of context and used against me.”

Acting City Clerk Nancy Russell, who was appointed to Martinez’s position when he left, said the staff has discussed Martinez’s return and will handle it professionally. Some of those who lodged the allegations said they intend to do their jobs and not let the past controversy interfere.

“My conscience is clear. I told the truth,” said one woman. “If no one believes us, what can we do? If I see him, I won’t say a thing. What’s there to say?”

Martinez, 55, rose from garage attendant to one of the city’s highest posts only to see his 32-year city career abruptly terminated in June when the council fired him for creating a sexually charged atmosphere in the office.

The case began in October, 1991, when a clerk typist accused Martinez of rubbing her thigh while the two were alone at a restaurant and inappropriately touching her on two other occasions during the workday. As that case was being reviewed, other women in the office accused Martinez of ogling them and making inappropriate remarks.

One woman said Martinez had stared at her breasts while he complimented the buttons on her blouse. Another said he asked her repeatedly if she knew how to whistle. A third said that Martinez called her on the telephone from across the office, complimented her dress and said he was looking at her.

After investigating, the city’s Personnel Department transferred the main accuser to another city job and counseled Martinez on sexual harassment standards. The case appeared to be over.

But, unaware that anybody had talked to Martinez about the charges, the main accuser wrote an angry letter to Council President John Ferraro alleging a cover-up. Ferraro turned the letter over to then-Mayor Tom Bradley, who revived the investigation and eventually recommended that Martinez be fired.

The council upheld that decision, after what officials described as agonizing closed-door debates.

Throughout the ordeal, Martinez maintained that a political dispute with Bradley prompted his termination. He appealed the June dismissal and last fall a city hearing examiner and the city’s Civil Service Commission found no evidence of misconduct.

The hearing examiner, Nancy Roberts Lonsdale, said she found inconsistencies in the allegations by the women and doubted their accounts. The main accuser had been drinking during the alleged incidents and shortly before she reported them to superiors, Lonsdale said.

Last month, the commissioners agreed with Lonsdale and said Martinez had been railroaded. They criticized the city attorney’s office for overzealously pursuing the case and ordered that he be reinstated.

On Friday, the council voted 8 to 7 not to review the commission’s decision, marking the final chapter in the case.

Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, concerned about the city’s bungling of the case and the message it sends to women who have been harassed, said she will investigate the entire matter in the council’s Personnel Committee in the coming weeks.

“This will definitely have a chilling effect on other women coming forward,” she said.

But Joe Gelman, chairman of the Civil Service Commission, said the case smacks of “sexual McCarthyism” to him. The city has to put out clearer sexual harassment guidelines to prevent false harassment claims in the future, he said.

“We have to make it clear that sexual harassment will not be tolerated but we have to define more clearly what sexual harassment is,” he said. “Left unclear, everything can be sexual harassment. I would like to discourage false, exaggerated claims that can put someone like Lee Martinez through hell.”