By Adam Pagnucco.
The Washington Post has reported on a cover letter sent to the county council summarizing a recent investigation of former Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson. I also have that letter and am publishing it below. Here is the bottom line:
Park and Planning found “no evidence of leadership creating a hostile, toxic or misogynistic work environment at Montgomery Parks, Montgomery Planning or the Montgomery Planning Board, nor was there any evidence to support the claim of witness tampering.”
Longtime readers of this site and other local media are very familiar with the 2022 planning board saga. It started when Anderson was accused of drinking in his office after hours, a charge to which he admitted and was docked a month’s pay. It continued when WJLA obtained a confidential email accusing Anderson of creating a “toxic misogynistic and hostile workplace,” which Anderson denied. It got exponentially worse when the rest of the board fired award-winning Planning Director Gwen Wright, who had defended Anderson, and a whistleblower complaint was filed against Partap Verma, another planning board member, for alleged ethics violations. I called on the county council to depose the four planning board members who fired Wright but they reacted by forcing out all of them, including Anderson. Months later, Verma accused Anderson of abusing his power in a state legislative hearing, which Anderson denied. All the while, Park and Planning had hired independent investigators to look into these events. The county council was informed of the results last week. Those results have not yet been released.
According to the cover letter, no evidence was found that leadership had created “a hostile, toxic or misogynistic work environment.” However, “leadership issues” on the planning board had “impaired employees’ sense of organizational stability.” That’s understandable given the extreme levels of infighting at the time which culminated in the utterly unjust firing of Wright.
Given that a summary has now been released by the Post, the full investigation must now be released by either the council or Park and Planning. Yes, redactions might be necessary to protect the identities of innocent people who may have been interviewed. But the public deserves a full accounting of all these events since we are the ones whose taxes are paying for all of it. In the meantime, the available evidence suggests that the allegations of a “toxic misogynistic and hostile workplace” are without merit. If true, that would make the political assassination of Casey Anderson one of the cruelest, most unfair and most underhanded acts in county government history.
The cover letter appears below.
*****
Mr. Evan Glass
President
Montgomery County Council
Council Office Building
100 Maryland Avenue, 6th Floor
Rockville, MD 20850
April 12, 2023
Dear Council President Glass,
The M-NCPPC has sent to you under separate cover the results of the investigation regarding the workplace culture of the Montgomery County Parks and Planning Departments and allegations of a hostile work environment created by leadership, including possible witness tampering. As you may know, the Maryland-National Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) hired an independent investigator to review all allegations, conduct a thorough investigation including interviewing multiple staff members, and report findings to the M-NCPPC bi-county leadership.
As the report indicates, the independent investigators concluded that there was no evidence of leadership creating a hostile, toxic or misogynistic work environment at Montgomery Parks, Montgomery Planning or the Montgomery Planning Board, nor was there any evidence to support the claim of witness tampering.
The report did point out that leadership issues on the Montgomery Planning Board, at the time, impaired employees’ sense of organizational stability and offers practical recommendations such as providing additional sensitivity training, developing guiding policies for the expectations of Montgomery Planning Board members, and establishing a centralized public affairs department. The Commissioners will review the recommendations in the report to see how those recommendations can be enacted.
Should you have any questions or comments about the investigation or its findings, please do not hesitate to contact me at: Asuntha.ChiangSmith@MNCPPC.org or (301) 454-1740.
Very Respectfully,
Asuntha Chiang-Smith
Executive Director