League Probes Santa Paula’s Hiring History

Already fighting a Justice Department voting rights probe, Santa Paula has now been hit by accusations of racial discrimination from the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organization.

Marcos R. Contreras, state director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said Thursday his group has launched an investigation into how minorities in Santa Paula have fared in terms of city hiring practices and services.

If the league doesn’t like what it finds, it may urge the two advocacy groups it works with the most--the ACLU and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund--to sue the city.

The league’s study will examine how often Latinos, who make up two-thirds of the city population but hold just one of five City Council seats, are hired for city management jobs and receive appointments to boards and commissions.

In a letter to Mayor Jim Garfield, Contreras earlier this week also asked for a copy of the city’s policies related to affirmative action and documentation of how Santa Paula has distributed federal grants.

“The events down there with regard to the voting patterns suggest we need to look into [other practices in] the city,” said David Rodriguez, a league member who lives in Ventura.

Garfield welcomes the group’s inquiry, but thinks Contreras’ characterization of the probe as the launch of an investigation is “divisive.”

“I think you’ll find the hiring practices at the city are not prejudicial in any way,” said the mayor of the town of about 27,000. “Boards and appointments . . . we’ve encouraged everybody to apply and we do everything in public.”

Garfield has asked Assistant City Manager Julie Hernandez, who oversees personnel, to assist with the league’s request.

Hernandez said her initial research shows three of the city’s 11 executive managers are Latino. Of a total of 43 management and supervisory positions, 16 are held by Latinos.

The city has eight member-appointed boards and commissions, with a total of 35 members. Of those, seven--or 20%--have Latino surnames.

“The Latino population is over 60%” in Santa Paula, Contreras said. “We know how to add and multiply. [The current numbers are] not 60%.

“I’m not talking about quotas [but] it’s a very large disproportion. I’m talking about fairness.”

Hernandez said the city posts vacancies for its boards and commissions in a local bilingual newspaper to encourage Latino applicants, and the city considers diverse backgrounds and Spanish-language skills a plus when hiring managers.

Though the league has no members in Santa Paula, it decided to get involved after being contacted by four Santa Paula residents, whom league leaders refused to identify.

Formed in 1929, the League of United Latin American Citizens has 50,000 members nationwide, according to a spokesman. In recent years, it has become involved in Watsonville and Santa Maria, two central California cities, with sizable Latino populations, that faced litigation over minority political representation.

Latino activists in Santa Paula began to speak out earlier this summer, when the Justice Department confirmed it had been investigating the city for possible violations of the federal Voting Rights Act.

The Justice Department has said it is prepared to sue Santa Paula if officials do not voluntarily agree to carve the city into five distinct voting districts, which federal officials say could empower pockets of the city in which Latino residents are concentrated. The department has held off on filing a lawsuit until a city advisor could study voting patterns and decide whether Santa Paula should cooperate. The city is expected to make that decision next week.

The city’s four white council members have resisted a district system, saying they don’t want to carve a 4.5-square-mile city into parochial districts. The city’s Latina councilwoman supports a switch to a district system.

Meanwhile, a local Latino activist had extended the debate to the neighboring city of Fillmore, which has about half of Santa Paula’s population but a similar history of limited Latino representation.

Earlier this week, the Fillmore City Council took some of the activists’ suggestions to heart. Members will consider adding polling locations in a heavily Latino part of the city to encourage greater voter turnout. They will also weigh a proposal to abolish a 15-year-old “English-only” resolution many Latino residents find offensive.

However, Fillmore council members, including the Latino mayor, have so far rejected a request that they voluntarily split Fillmore into five political districts.