Examples of pre-Culver-era distrust:

• The library system's entire work force witnessed AFPL's Personnel Office doing its part to implement the details of Hooker's illegal "reorganization" of the Central Library - a spectacularly disruptive and illegal personnel transactions that eventually cost the county over $18 million in legal settlements.
  
  
• Virtually everyone at the library knows the story of AFPL's Personnel Office arranging for a person ex-Board Chair William McClure met at a convention in Las Vegas to get hired at AFPL - and at a starting salary higher than any other person hired in a similar position before or since.

Examples of Culver-era distrust:

• After Hooker hired Culver to manage AFPL's personnel unit, we all witnessed Culver going along with the series of highly questionable post-"reorganization" personnel transactions initiated by Carolyn Garnes.
  
  
• Also on Culver's watch, AFPL's personnel office did not object to several post-lawsuit retailiatory (and therefore also illegal) personnel actions that Hooker and/or Garnes authorized. Those personnel transactions ended up costing the county $250,000 in legal payments on top of the $18 million it had already shelled out to settle the discrimination lawsuit brought by library employees.
  
  
• No one who's ever been through a county grievance hearing and lost their case because Hooker lied to the grievance panel is likely to forget that always at Hooker's side in those hearings - and never saying a word to contradict Hooker's self-serving distortions of the facts - sat the manager of AFPL's personnel office.
  
  
• Most employees have heard the stories about Hooker's numerous consequence-free screaming fits at library employees who somehow displeased her and the famous abusive "performance evaluation" she conducted with one of her subordinates while Ms. Culver was in the room.
  
  
• Still working at the library are plenty of non-amnesiac managers and subject specialists exiled from Central during the Hooker/Garnes era and who, with the cooperation of AFPL's Personnel Office, were replaced by other individuals with demonstrably poorer qualifications for those posts. One can only imagine what feelings they must harbor toward AFPL's Personnel Manager (excuse us, Human Resources Manager) who, by not opposing those transfers, gave her blessing to each and every one of these profound career derailments.
  
  
• Rather than exposing Hooker’s role in the preventable tragedy of Gladys Dennard's brutal murder in July 2002, the Personnel Office (presumably at Hooker's behest) made the arrangements to demote Dennard's supervisor - not only by cutting her salary but by removing her from the library system’s administration and exiling her to a distant branch library. The Personnel Office’s complicity in implementing that demotion and transfer not only destroyed the subordinate’s career at AFPL, it allowed Hooker to wash her hands of the fact that Hooker stood by and did nothing to help resolve the personnel problem Dennard and her supervisors had been unsuccessfully trying to cope with for several years. The upshot for the institution of this particular misuse of the library system's Personnel Office: Dennard’s scapegoated supervisor eventually resigned, and Hooker stayed on as AFPL’s director for another two years.

• The organization is currently mired in a grievance protesting the fact that only one of the B23s assigned as "circulation managers" at the six Regional Libraries was upgraded to a B31. (Not surprisingly, this grievance goes back to a raft of reckless promises Garnes made during her regime.) This grievance could have been completely avoided if the Personnel Office had been doing its job. We predict the Personnel Office-approved desk audits justifying the upgrades of all the B23s aren't exactly going to support the library's claim that the other B23s aren't performing the same duties--minus the hasty ex post facto removal of doing any further performance evaluations--as the single B23 employee whose position was upgraded to a B31.
  
  
• More recently, it was someone in the Personnel Office who reportedly concocted the plan to upgrade the positions and salaries of several Central Library employees who ex-Deputy Director Carolyn Garnes had also made certain promises to before Garnes was pressured to resign. (We assume it was these employees' current supervisor - one of several Garnes proteges still in positions of authority in the library system - who asked the Personnel Office to help her come up with some way to at long last follow through on her departed mentor's promises.) The merit system watchdogs down at county headquarters thwarted the plan, however. The Personnel Office's response to being thus thwarted? It distributed faux recruiting announcements for the positions it couldn't get upgraded via the previous scheme. Not only are the qualifications listed for these vacancies obviously tailored to make sure the incumbents get upgraded, but guess what else? Another position advertised along with the ones we just mentioned is similarly tailored-for-an-incumbent recruitment announcement for a C51 position in AFPL's Personnel Office!

• It looks like the Interim Library Director is allowing herself to be used as a tool to cement several highly questionable personnel changes at the Central Library instigated by the despised Carolyn Garnes.
  
  
• It looks like the Interim Library Director has endorsed the idea that quickly upgrading the salary of an employee in the Personnel Office is a higher priority for the institution than filling a branch manager position everyone knew in January would be vacant in February.
  
  
• It looks like the current administration is trying to sneak in under the proverbial wire all of these questionable personnel transactions before the next Director arrives to put the kabosh on them. (Now we understand why the application deadline for that set of job vacancies was a mere week from the day the so-called recruiting was announced: they apparently want to get these people upgraded before Szabo gets here.)

Ms. Haimes, I am sadly shocked at the recent personnel announcements. You know, the ones custom tailored for certain individuals? Why bother pretending that the process is going to be fair? Even the most persistently innocent among us can see where they are pointing.

This Is Not The Way To Do It.

Please don't make me regret that I have done my best to support you during the past nine months. Swallow the embarassment and do something about this travesty.


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Your latest observation is right on the money! In corporate america, such inadequacies, ineffectiveness, and intentional misapplications of basic employment law among a well-staffed personnel office would warrant an investigation of current practices--but apparently not so at AFPL.

During the Hooker/Garnes regime, I experienced first-hand the unprofessionalism of the personnel office after it became managed by Sylvia Culver. We all knew that Hooker was capable of creating unfounded charges and disciplinary actions on library employees, but her schemes could not have been carried out had they not received the full cooperation of the personnel administrative team.

Ms. Culver, if you do not speak up against injustice, you are for injustice. One may not have pulled the trigger, but one can certainly have been an accessory to the crime....


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I work at one of the busiest and most understaffed branches in the library system. Our manager wrote and submitted a carefully and strongly worded request for more staff that mentioned that overwork was leading our branch's employees to become ill, and that absences due to illness lead to inadequate coverage. That candidate for "Least Helpful Employee of the Year" you mentioned in your article phoned the branch and advised that all sufferers from illness should file Workman’s Compensation claims. Meanwhile one worker who sustained an overuse injury to her wrist was harshly rebuffed after she did file a Workman’s Comp claim!


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Thank you, AFPLWATCH, first of all for deciding not to dismantle the website, secondly for giving staff a voice, thirdly for identifying the problems that plague the library, and finally for pleading our case with all the dignity it deserves.