When it comes to filling top positions at El Paso City Hall, two questions often arise: What is their ethnicity and where are they from?

That has been especially true since Joyce Wilson came from Arlington. Va. to take over as the El Paso’s first city manager in September 2004.

In July, city Rep. Steve Ortega received a visit from representatives of the League of United Latin American Citizens, Elvia Hernandez and Ray Mancera, who inquired about Wilson’s hiring record after hearing complaints.

Hernandez, who served one full term and part of another on City Council as the District 8 city representative, is the El Paso district director of LULAC.

“We have received a lot of complaints ever since Joyce Wilson came on board,” Hernandez said in an early August interview. “We heard that 90 percent of the department heads were non-minorities.

“We said we’re going to do some homework on this. We got some information front the city and we plan to go visit with Joyce.”

With El Paso’s population approaching 80 percent Hispanic, Hernandez said, it doesn’t make sense to have City Hall hiring significant numbers of non-Hispanics, especially from outside the city.

“We have to keep them in line,” she said. “When they have openings, they’ve got to make sure they know the views of the community,” she said. “If there’s a qualified Hispanics, you need to hire them.”

Hernandez recalled when she was a city representative in the late 1990s and said she thinks as many as 90 percent of city department heads were Hispanics from El Paso.

Wilson bristled at the suggestion that she has been insensitive to El Paso’s majority minority population and provided information showing her hiring record is better than Hernandez had described it.

Hernandez admitted as much and withdrew her criticism after she saw employment data from the city and correspondence from Wilson on the subject.

Newspaper Tree also received anonymous complaints from former El Pasoans wanting to return who had sought top positions with the city and had not been able to get a foot in the door.

However, neither those complainants nor the individuals who complained to LULAC were willing to step forward and discuss their experiences.

‘Incessant microscopic scrutiny’

Under the Texas Public Information Act, Newspaper Tree sought and obtained from City Hall a database of all city employees as well as copies of letters and memoranda that Wilson has sent to City Council members regarding her hiring practices since becoming city manager.

The data show that Wilson has personally hired or promoted 19 deputy city managers and department heads since late 2004.

Of those, 10 were white, five were Hispanic, two were black and one was Asian-American.

That means 42 percent of her top hires and promotions were minorities. Eleven of them were man and eight were women.

Wilson wasn’t happy about the questions, however, and said so in a five-page letter to City Council members on Aug. 3 that was promoted by Newspaper Tree’s questions.

“Every year as we go through the budget process, we inevitably get the issue of executive staff compensations and appointments,” she wrote. “This year, the issue has developed to the point where we are not getting inquiries about the demographics of the leadership, including an (open records request) from Newspaper Tree requesting salaries, ethnicity, and resumes from all departments.

“This incessant microscopic scrutiny of me, my employment actions and city staff is beyond frustrating. It is becoming demoralizing and personally hurtful.”

Wilson said she would feel differently if other public entities received the same level of scrutiny.

Wilson had a chart produced showing the ethnicity of department heads and executive-level employees to address the issue.

“You will note that there are 30 deputy city manager and department head positions,” she wrote. “Of those, 63 percent are male, 35 percent are female, 34 percent white, 66 percent ethnic minority.

“Collectively, Hispanics represent 50 percent of the total executive leadership group for this organization; Whites 41 percent and other ethnic minorities, 9 percent.

“I would speculate that 70 percent (if not more) of the female and minority executive appoints to these categories have occurred during my tenure.”

Wilson described them as “young, talented emerging leaders with extraordinary credentials who will easily be positioned to move into the top leadership position is in the future, including my own position.”

“Many are internal promotions, local hires and repatriated El Paso natives, who returned home to part of this new, dynamic changing environment,” she said.

‘We’re satisfied with these figures’

Taking the numbers from Wilson’s letter to council, Hernandez noted that half of the top two levels of executives at City Hall are minorities as are 63 percent of the next three levels.

The 104 city employees in those calculations don’t include the staffs of city attorney’s office or the El Paso Water Utilities, which has its own hiring system.

“We’re satisfied with these figures,” Hernandez said after studying them. “We’re going to be on top if it from now on. It’s the responsibility of LULAC to look out for the community’s concerns, not just the membership’s.

“But we’re going to say this is OK.”

Hernandez conceded that she was surprised at Wilson’s hiring record and at how well the city has done at moving Hispanics up.

“I am surprised because I personally had thought we were looking at more discrepancies,” she said.

Wilson in her letter to the council also noted that in the past 24 months, she hired an Asian-American woman, Jane Shang, as a deputy city manager and seven department heads.

Of the eight, three are Hispanic, two white, two Asian-American and one is black. Six are men, two are women and four were promoted from within City Hall.

With El Paso’s voter-approved change from a strong mayor to a city manager form of government in 2004 came a change in the way the city’s department heads are hired.

"In a city manager form of government, the city manager is in charge of all hiring,” Cook said.

But, he said, Wilson has taken input from council members and the community.

The hiring process and an emphasis on hiring El Paso applicants for top positions were also issues Hernandez raised in August.

“Under Ramirez, we would interview them and give our recommendation to the mayor,” she said. “I don’t believe he ever went against our recommendation.”

When the mayor served as the city’s chief executive officer, the method of filling top positions varied from one mayor to the next.

“As I recall before Wardy, key positions like the police and fire chief were voted on by council,” Mayor John Cook said, referring to the city’s previous mayor, Joe Wardy. “The city attorney and chief administrative officer were the mayor’s pick.”

However, the selection process also involved screening by the Human Resources Department and the use of assessment panels to come up with the top three candidates.

Assessment panels were made up of experts in their fields, such as planning department directors or police chiefs from other cities, who would test and question the qualified applicants for department head positions.

Under the late former mayor, Carlos Ramirez, Cook said, city representatives “always interviewed the top three candidates.”

City Rep. Emma Acosta, who spent nearly 30 years working for the city and retired in 2005 as head of the city’s Solid Waste Department, said that’s how she won the department head position during Ramirez’s administration.

After the grueling assessment panel process, she said, City Council members independently interviewed her and the two other top applicants for the job.

She was the only female applicant and came out of the process with the highest score. Acosta said.

“Then it was the mayor and council that appointed me,” she said.

Acosta said she is not entirely familiar with Wilson’s hiring process but that she and other council members did have the chance interview Wilson’s selections for fire chief, Otto Drozd III, in April and for aviation director, Monica Lombrana, in March.

Council members did not meet other candidates for those jobs, however.

Lombrana is an El Pasoan who worked directly under the director, Pat Abeln, and was ready to take over when Abeln left.

Drozd, a bi-lingual Cuban-American from Florida, was the candidate preferred by the El Paso Firefighters Association leadership over the top local candidate, who lacked the bachelor’s degree required for the job.

“The firefighters are all really satisfied,” Acosta said. “Drozd’s credentials were very impressive. I called the association’s president and asked him if he was satisfied.

“He said, ‘Emma, this guy blew us out of the water.’ ”

Acosta expressed no complaint about Wilson or the people she has hired.

Cook remembered being involved in the 2006 hiring of Kathy Dodson, an El Pasoan, as economic development director in 2006.

“I did interview the top candidates,” Cook said. “That did not happen with the fire chief, but Joyce did set up a panel that included some council members and staff to do interviews.”

Wilson doesn’t use assessment panels.

But, she said all of her executive appointments have been made after following a process that included interview panels composed of council members and representatives of the business community, neighborhood associations and the affected departments.

“The individual offered the position was consistently the consensus candidate or the No. 1 or No. 2 preferred choice from these processes,” Wilson said.

Several times in her memo to council members, Wilson expressed her dismay over the questions about her hiring practices.

“This would not be so bothersome to me were it not for the fact that I have dedicated my entire professional career to communities with large ethnic minority populations,” she said. “I am acutely aware of the need for the city government organization to be reflective of the face of the community, and there is no greater advocate for diversity recruitment than me.

“Also, as a professional woman breaking barriers into a traditionally male-dominated profession, I know the importance of opening doors and keeping them open for others.”

Some, including city Rep. Eddie Holguin and former Rep. Melina Castro, have raised questions about Wilson’s hires, especially when they came from out of town.

But, Cook said, “Why bother going through the motions of a national search for job candidates if you’re not going to pick the best candidate?

“I think you should always be sensitive to those issues, but the bottom line is you should always hire the best person for the job, especially when you’re paying such high rates of pay.”

City Rep. Carl Robinson agrees.

“When you have a vacant position, you advertise it for anyone to apply whether they’re from El Paso or Chicago,” he said. “You would always want to have the very best qualified person in that position.”

The database the city provided to Newspaper Tree contained information that included salary and wage information, ethnicity, gender and hire date on 6,574 city employees including well over 100 part-timers.

Of those, 1,972 are police and firefighters and 4,602 are non-uniformed employees.

Of the non-uniformed employees, 2,932 or 64 percent are men are men and 1,670 and 36 percent are women.

Looking at the 100 highest paid employees, the highest paid is Ed Archuleta, who has headed the Public Service Board’s El Paso Water Utilities for more than 20 years, at $275,000 a year. Wilson is second highest at $216,743.

Number 100 at $90,000 is Angela Mora, the deputy director of public health.

Looking at the top 100 :

-- 70 are men and 30 are women
-- 47 are white, 44 are Hispanic, 5 are black and 4 are Asian-American.
-- 34 are white males and 13 are white females, 29 are Hispanic males and 15 are Hispanic females.

Leaving out the police and fire departments out of the mix of the 100 highest paid non-uniformed city employees:

-- 68 are men, 32 are women
-- 46 are white, 44 are Hispanic, 5 are black and 5 are Asian-American.
--32 are white males, 27 are Hispanic males, 17 are Hispanic females and 13 are white females

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To reach David Crowder, write to dcrowder@epmediagroup.com or call (915) 351-0605, ext. 30, or 630-6622.