- Good evening, welcome to "Feminist Perspective". We are at the present time in the midst of a series of meetings with people who are running for state office and had planned, as I announced last week to continue that program this week. However, one of our candidates was unable to come tonight and we will, however, continue for the next two weeks with the people who are running for the legislature from districts 45 and 43. Therefore, tonight we have turned to a subject of considerable interest in Lawrence and the community, the municipal act against discrimination. And we have as our guest tonight, Jack Rose, a member of the city commission, Cynthia Turner, Co-director of the Ballard center, and Lee Ketsel, a citizen and a member of the League of Women Voters. We would like to ask our panelists to talk from their various points of view concerning the passage of a municipal ordinance against discrimination. I'd like to start by asking, first of all, what is the Human Relations Commission? Jack, would you tell us about that? - Well, yes, Emily, I'd be glad to. The Human Relations Commission is a nine-person commission that is appointed by the mayor with the concurrence of the city commission and it's purpose is to work in the general area of human relations. This commission was established by an ordinance passed by the city several years ago. And one of the functions of the ordinance that is before us at this time is to clarify the responsibilities and authorities of the Human Relations Commission in that the authority and responsibility of this commission was not really spelled out too well in the original ordinance. - Could you give us an idea of under what circumstances this Human Relations Commission was established in the first place? Was there anything going on in particular in Lawrence? - Well, of course, I wasn't on the said commission at that time and really didn't follow it as closely as I might have. I don't think that it was established particularly in response to any crisis. I think it became apparent that these sorts of commissions were being established in cities culpable lines and that these sorts of commissions had a role to play in furthering race relations. And I think it was appointed with the idea of improving race relations and getting better cooperation between the various people in town. Cynthia, was there any crisis going on at that time? I really don't recall. I defer to you on that question. - Yeah, well, I think that the crisis had happened because we're in the stands what's happened to be a pushing relation then came here after the crisis that we had here in Lawrence that I'm quite sure all the Lawrence residents recall and remember much to, I know it reset in mind but I think that burn was hard after that. - Well, yeah, but the Human Relations Commission as I recall it was appointed well in advance. The Human Relations Commission goes back close to 10 years when our first director of human resources was hired more recently. So I think the director of human resources was probably hired in response to racial troubles that we had. But the commission, I think goes back quite early before that. - Ordinarily, would it be true to say that municipal commissions don't regularly have staff of any kind? - Most of them don't. Most of the commissions work with a staff member who is on the staff anyway, and is responsible for them. For instance, we have the parks and recreation commissioner that works with Wayne Bly. Maybe when it was originally formed, it was formed the way that the Human Relations Commission and director of human resources came up. We have the traffic safety committee that works with the director of public works, planning commissioner that works with the planning director. So I think most of these commissions tend to work with a person, but I don't know that the relationship between most of these commissions is as close as the relationship between the Human Relations Commission and the human resources director. I think that's a closer relation probably than any of them except maybe the planning commission and the director of planning. - Well, what do you see this relationship to be? Lee, do you have any opinion on that? Between the director of human resources and human relations committee? - According to the ordinance, if it's passed as it is now written, the director of human resources will be the staff person for the Human Relations Commission. And it will be a very direct, close relationship, I think and the Hutchinson Ordinance after which ours was modeled, the director of human resources was made the secretary to the commission actually and I understand that Mr. Lopez and Hutchinson is not altogether pleased with that responsibility. And he finds it tedious to be taking notes all the time, minutes, but, I guess this will be something of a departure to have written into an ordinance that a city staff member will be assigned to a commission as its staff person. Is that right? - I can't think of another situation where that exists. - But I think it will be a good one. I think if this really passes, it really be a good ordinance and I think it'll bring the city and the people in the city much closer together. So they'll be dealing with the problems directly and normally. - Well, certainly during the first eight years of the Human Relations Commission, there was a grievous need felt for staff, full-time staff person to work with the problems that the appointed full-time employed personnel of the Human Relations Commission were coming up against. - You said, Jack, that you compared the formation of the Human Relations Commission with some others. How many commissions all together are there in the city? - Oh, I wish you hadn't asked me that. Anyway, I think there are 10 other commissions and I wouldn't wanna be asked to name them all. I could if I thought about it long enough but there are about 10 commission. Now, some of these, like the hospital board or administrative commissions, in other words, their functioning is to run the hospital. I think all of them, the library board tends to fall in that category too. The rest of them are advisory commissions and the Human Relations Commission falls into the category of an advisory committee. - The advisory to whom? - To the city commission. - To the city commission? - Yes. - So that actually any action that they took would be, they would not take the actions directly? - Well, when this ordinance that is before us now would tend to spell out the responsibilities and authority of the Human Relations Commission and would give them some authority on their own that they don't currently have. And as I said earlier, currently the ordinance that establishes the Human Relations Commission really doesn't say much except they're establishing this commission and it gives broad general purposes but it doesn't really go into much detail. So, this particular ordinance, and I wish I'd brought a copy of that ordinance with me, but this particular ordinance spells out more their responsibilities and their authorities and I think under the terms of this ordinance, they would have some specific authorities spelled out. - So it could be more comparable then to the hospital board rather than the- - Well, it still couldn't be comparable to the hospital board 'cause the hospital board has an organization that they actually administer, that is the hospital. Whereas the Human Relations Commission doesn't have a large business such as the hospital that they actually administer. They'll still be primarily an advisory board, but the duties and powers of the commission will be spelled out and they'll have some duties and powers that are not currently spelled out. - And they would have, for instance, the power to initiate complaints. Isn't that right? - Yes. - That's the old ordinance. - Would you like to explain in general, we'll start with you, Jack, just what is in this ordinance? - Well, this ordinance basically has four parts. It spells out the duties and responsibilities of the Human Relations Commission. It has a public accommodation section. It has an open housing section and it has a fair employment practice section. Now, if you'll read this ordinance, at the same time that this ordinance is passed, it repeals either three or four existing city ordinances. The reason it does this is we currently have ordinances relating to the Human Relations Commission to open housing and public accommodation. So, while this amplifies and somewhat expands the existing ordinance on the Human Relations Commission, open housing and public accommodations, we are replacing one ordinance with another in that case. But the thing that we do not currently have in the city of Lawrence is a fair employment practice ordinance. So, that section, the fourth section of this ordinance is new and is the only part of it that really is an entirely new ordinance for the city of Lawrence. So basically what we're talking here is one ordinance that will combine three existing city ordinances and add a fourth section. And that section is fair employment practice section. - And the second one was what? First the creation of the accommodation- - Public accommodations and open housing ordinance. - Public accommodations? - Yes. - All right, now I'm not sure I understand about the creation of something which was already created 10 years ago. Is that customary to recreate if you change something? - Oh, I don't know if it's customary or not and why it was, came about in exactly this form, I'm not sure because this ordinance was drafted by our former director of human resources and approved by the Human Relations Commission. I suspect what they wanted to do was get rid of all existing ordinances and come up with one comprehensive ordinance that covered the entire area of human relations in the city of Lawrence. They probably felt that rather than to modify and demand the existing ordinances, it'd be better just to start over and come up with one comprehensive ordinance. Now, that's my guess, I don't know. - I think that's true because I talked to manager, speaking of the director and I'm quite sure this is true, this is the reason why he- - They're just easier to start afresh instead of mending the old stuff. - Do you have any comment about the need for this, Lee? - The need for that, that section of the ordinance on the- - The need for recreating it starting out all over again, not the new ordinance. - No, I just think it's wise to keep written into some ordinance the fact that we shall have a Human Relations Commission with members appointed for three-year terms and electing their own chairman among them and so forth. - Well, I think the reason for rewriting the section, setting up the Human Relations Commission was that the Human Relations Commission and the director of human resources felt that their charge for the city was not specific enough for them to really know what they ought to be doing. And they wanted us to give them in more detail what their duties were, what their responsibilities were and what we wanted to do. In other words, the original ordinance was dealt in generalities and I think they felt that the time had come to quit dealing in generalities and get down to specifics. - Prior to your election to the city commission, did you ever serve on any of these city commissions? - No. - Did you, Lee? - No. - Cynthia? - No, I've never been asked to serve. - How are people chosen to serve on these committees? - Well, this is kind of an interesting thing. Under the law, the mayor appoints to these commissions with the approval of the governing body which is the said commission. As a practical matter, when vacancies come up, various groups and individuals tend to give us names, sometimes we receive letters recommending people, sometimes we get verbal recommendations. These names come either to individual commissioners or sometimes they come to the city manager. We discuss these different names and I hope I'm not telling anything out of school here, but basically what it amounts to is when we find a name that everyone tends to agree would be a suitable person, then we would ask that person if he or she would be willing to serve. And I think it's been the practice during the time I've been on the commission that we would not appoint a person if any one commissioner had a strong objection to that person. Now, certainly there's no legal requirement for that, I suppose we'd sit down and voted in on a three to two but it's more or less been the practice that any person who's appointed on these commissions is not opposed by any of the city commissioner. Now, of course, you run into the situation where a lot of times, one or more of the city commissioners simply don't know some of the people who are proposed and so we rely on other people's judgment about it. One thing that we have tried to do on some of these commissions, and there's been a lot of talk about this among the city commission is to broaden the base of the people who serve on these commissions. You know, if you read through who are on some of these commissions, you'll see that these are the same people who are involved in various organizations around town and it's kind of the power structure of the community. And we've tried to broaden this base and to appoint people to the commission that represents all segments of the community. And this was one of the, this was a recommendation that came up in the steering committee report that this commission should be as broad-based as possible. And we have made a sincere effort to try to get people from all segments on these various commissions. - One thing I wish we could do in Lawrence is discover a way of finding people to appoint to commissions who would take the trouble to attend the meetings of those commissions. It has bothered me and some of my pals in the League of Women Voters tremendously that 50% of certain commissioners just don't show up for meetings. Very distressing. - You know, it's interesting that you mentioned that, Lee, because from time to time, the city commission meets with these various commissions. And when we do- - You get a better turnout. - The city commission is almost always unanimously there. - I know, I noticed that recently, yeah. - And unfortunately, I can't say that about these other commissioners. - Even so when you meet with those commissions, I think they get a better turnout than you do normally. - Undoubtedly, they do. But if you restrict the people you appoint to these commissions to your very busy people in town, they're gonna have a lot of conflicts. And I think that's one of the reasons that you should broaden the base and draw in to these appointed, say commissions, people who aren't involved in everything else. You know, there are a lot of people that have a meeting every night. Well, if you appoint one of these people, that has a meeting every night to an appointed city body, he's not gonna be able to make those meetings 'cause he's got all these other meetings and yet a city like Lawrence has a reservoir of talent that is practically unlimited. And it's strictly a matter of getting the names of the right people and approaching them and asking them to serve and most of them will serve. Most of them are very happy to serve. - I guess what I'm thinking is that there ought to be some provision for gracefully retiring a person who finds that he just, he or she just can't seem to make the meetings, but he doesn't seem to be aware of that. He'll miss five or six months in a row and not make any move to resign from the commission. - Well, I wasn't aware that we had that sort of turn out for these commissions. The ones that we get minutes from tend to have decent turnouts, but we don't get minutes from all of them. - I see. - And some of them don't meet on a very regular basis. - Well, I definitely think for the planning commission and the human relations, we need people that do attend because it is, you're planning and you're doing things for the total community. And I think we need people that is versatile in their opinions too on both of these groups because I think they need representatives from the various segments of the town especially on the planning commission since we're up for NDP for East Lawrence, I think it's very, we really need someone on the planning commission along that's a representative of East Lawrence. I don't know whether we have this, but I- - I don't know either. Now I think the planning commission has pretty good turnout, Cynthia and I think there's good reason. They get zoning items down there that are very controversial and the planning commission tends to have very good turnout. In fact, we had a gentleman who resigned the planning commission not too long ago because he simply didn't, was not able to attend all of their meetings. And he recognized that it just wasn't fair to the other people to not show up for the meetings. So he resigned. So I think planning commission probably runs as good a turnout anyway. - Well, I was just wondering if we do have, being in one of the minorities, do we have someone on the planning commission from the minorities, do you know? - Yes, we have a gentleman. He also lives in East Lawrence, matter of fact, but he does not live in the NDP area. He lives south of the NDP area. - Well, you gotta get someone in the area. - Well, I was wondering, we've gotten off on the subject of tenants, which is undoubtedly very important. In fact, we heard the other day, this is totally non verified that someone was reasonably reappointed to a commission who had attended only twice during the time that he'd previously been on but be that as it may, that's something that 'course could easily be checked out. - That sounds like a rumor you're getting started there anyway. - I'm not getting started, I'm only repeating what I heard. - I see, I guess you're repeating that. - I'm more concerned, however, in talking about whether or not this recommendation from the steering committee which perhaps we should explain a little more, what the steering committee is, did you make any- - Gosh, what steering committee are we talking about? - We're talking about the Lawrence police community relations steering committee, which I was part of. - Oh. - And they made the recommendation that the membership on commissions be expanded to include representatives- - I think broadly-based was the terminology that they used. - Now, are you suggesting then that following that, a specific effort was made to take affirmative action in this respect? - Yes. - 'Cause we hear a lot about affirmative action now. - Well, I don't know if the term affirmative action applies this, what I'm suggesting is that when these appointments come up, we try very hard to select people who we feel are representative of the various segments of the community. And in other words, we try not to select from the, wholly from what I would call the power structure of the community. We try to select people from different occupational groups, from different geographic groups, from different racial groups. In other words, people who represent all segments of the community. Now, this is a long task though because vacancies normally only come up on these commissions about once a year, maybe one vacancy a year or something like that. So you see, it takes a while to make much of a change in these commissions, unless you get a bunch of resignations or something like that. So it's not something that's done overnight but we are making a very sincere effort to make sure that all of these commissions have people that represent all segments of, as far as possible, all segments of the community. - And both sexes, right? - Certainly, certainly. - And that is exactly what affirmative action means. To make a conscious effort to do that. To set some goals for it and to accomplish it as a conscious effort. - Since we're talking about this from the feminist viewpoint, I think it would be well to mention that there's nothing like 50% of appointed commissioners in Lawrence who are women. Isn't that so? - Having a hard time finding qualified- - Oh, come on now. - I'm very weakened you said that. - I can't tell you why it's that way, Lee, because that goes back before my time. I don't know- - I know it goes way, way back. - But however, so do a lot of other things in which affirmative action needs to be taken. Has an actual analysis been made by any group, like League of Women Voters on this? It would be a good thing, I'm sure. - No, not that I know of. - Of course, it would be a good thing for the commission to do too. It'd be very simple tabulation to bring that into accord with, as you have put a real cross section of a - - And this is the reason why I'm speaking because I asked about the planning commission, because we've had lots of blacks say that there's no one on the planning commission to represent them in the various segments of the commission. That's the reason I ask him the question, who is on there? Meaning it's on. - There's one black on the planning commission and so I think you would have to respond to that by telling there is, in fact, a black on the planning commission. They do well to read the list of who's on there. - And you say there are nine members? - No, that's HRC. - No. The planning commission's a little different. You see, that's a joint city-county appointment. The city appoints half and the county appoints half. - Do you know how many is those? - I think there are about 10 on there and it's half city and half county because you see the planning commission has jurisdiction in the county, as well as in the city and then those items that are in the county go to the County commissioners for final action. Those items that are in city come to the city commissioner for final action. So it is a little different. We have one other board that is city county, and that's the mental health board, Douglas County Health Board which is city-county appointment thing. - All right, let's start with the second of these items. Since we've talked considerably about the creation of this commission, what about the situation on public accommodations? You say that there already was an ordinance concerning that, how on the opinion of the panelists has that worked? - Cynthia? - Okay, well, some of the public accommodations as far as when I first moved here to Lawrence, the minorities could not eat in the restaurants and they had certain areas that they had to stay in as the picture shows. And since that time, since that time has passed over, I guess, 15 years, I don't know how long that's passed, everything seems to go along our ride. I think that when my daughter and I first went up the drug storage, she wanted to sit down at the counter and I told her she couldn't, she couldn't understand, she was about nine or 10. Now my granddaughter sits up the counter and it just seems like it's always been there. I don't think there's... Everything goes along very smoothly. - How's the situation with hairdressers in Lawrence? That's the only area where I've heard questions raised in recent years. - I don't know, I don't know. I wear natural, so I don't know. I see. - And this is included in the public accommodations? - Yeah, I don't know about these hairdressers, I was having a conversation with a barber one day and he was telling me that shortly after the passage of this public accommodations ordinance that some blacks came in his barbershop, got a haircut, left and that's the last blacks he's ever seen in his barbershop. So I- - Maybe they didn't like his cut. - Well, maybe not. - I don't know, I don't think the civic, because I know there's two beauty shops which two blacks work in. They're all white beauty shops and they go there, blacks go there, and I don't hear any complaints. - There certainly are shops that will take care of anyone who comes. - I haven't heard any complaints and I made an inquiry about the open-housing ordinance, how many complaints had been filed and that sort of thing. And as I recall, since we've had an open-housing ordinance, there have been what, three or four complaints- - Three or four complaints. One of the professors I know trying to buy a home in a certain area, but since then- - Filed and then I don't know what the outcomes are of that, but that doesn't necessarily indicate there is any problem. I think as much as anything, it probably indicates, people are very reluctant to file a complaint and go through all the legal hassle of trying to prosecute one of these things. - Before we leave the public accommodation, so if somebody did have a complaint under the prison ordinance, what would they do? - Well, I think they'd go down to the human resources director first and talk with him. And I'm not exactly sure what the procedure from that- - I imagine they go to the civil rights in Topeka. I think that's where they're mostly filed. - In other words, they would have to turn to this prison state law? - No, I think if they can get satisfaction right here on that. - There's local law on that and it ends up that the person who's accused of violating the ordinance is tried in municipal court. And in fact, that's the reason that there's a local ordinance. So it can be handled on a local level instead of going through the state. - Yeah, I'm just saying though, it's probably is a local level. I think the two incidents they did first go to the human relations, the human, - Civil Rights Commission, Kansas? - Civil Rights Commission. - The Kansas Civil Rights commission? - That's right. - Well, of course the Kansas Civil Rights Commission has powers to investigate that the local group does not have, so, they might have to go there. - Right now, this is, the present public accommodations act and the municipal one does not give anybody the power to investigate, is that what you're saying? - Well, it doesn't give them the power to look at the books. And I don't know whether that's... I haven't heard of the subpoena power being important in public accommodations cases. I can see that it would be in, for instance in the case of housing, you would look at a landlord's tenant lists and see whether you had any minorities or whether he'd had any minorities or women living in any of his apartments ever, or over the past year or two. And you can demonstrate that he was in fact discriminating, perhaps. But it would be awfully hard to go to records and prove anything about public accommodations. - This is the reason why I think this civil ordinance that we're studying- - I think before we go into the prison bill, I'd like to clarify what we have at the present time, that's why I'm raising questions concerning, Jack told us that except for their employment practice, part of this new municipal ordinance, we already had the first three in some form. So I think it's very important that we recognize what that form is and what problems that might have. - Well, we have what reads like a very effective ordinance. And, apparently it has been because as Cynthia says, we don't hear about public accommodations complaints in Lawrence anymore, or perhaps the climate has changed so much that there's just no occasion for such complaints to arise. - We'll have to stop for a moment for station announcement. - Ever since he lived in a cave, man has been terrified by the sounds of nature. By the anger of thunder and the rage of the seas. By the distant roar of an avalanche, or the sudden snap of lightning. - Our open line is 864-4530. So please feel free to call in any question at any time now. We'd be happy to interrupt the discussion in order to attempt to answer your question or if you have comments, we would welcome those also. We've just been talking about the present municipal acts that, or already on the books. And we're discussing the question, public accommodations. Would somebody explain exactly what is included as a public accommodation? - Well, I don't have the act right in front of me but my recollection is that our present public accommodations ordinance covers such places as bowling alleys, swimming pools, motels, hotels, restaurants. I just can't think of any of the others. I know that the proposed ordinance would cover other additional places such as cemeteries. Perhaps it mentions trailer camps- - Trailer courts. - Trailer courts. - Have these been a problem? What about the cemeteries? Is there a problem in regard to who can be buried where? - I don't know. - We don't know, none of us knows. - I know that at one particular time, I think because we do have a certain area out here but I don't know . - I suppose a mortician offers a public accommodation too. Anyone who's in business to serve the public, by this ordinance is required to serve all the public not just a portion of it. - Then it used to be that they served, morticians, they didn't take minorities' bodies. - But that is no longer true, you think? - I don't know. - From what I read in the paper, I gather that that is no longer true, but I'm not sure. - At least they're not going to certain ones. I know there is still several here in town but I don't know if any blacks ever goes there to bury. Maybe that's just because it's been a rule so long they just never challenged it anyway. - The third part is housing and we already have a housing ordinance, right? What does the housing ordinance include now? - Well, I think one of the biggest differences in the new housing ordinance and the old housing ordinance is that it includes that you cannot discriminate because of sex. In fact, in the old ordinances, there were no references to discrimination on the basis of sex. And the new ordinance includes discrimination on the basis of sex and all of the sections that is in public accommodations, the housing, the employment section. So, that is a rather substantial change, I think in that it makes the new ordinance a lot more comprehensive than the old ordinance was. - So, I think from our feminist perspective, it makes a tremendous difference and this, of course, would be patterned on the title seven of the equal rights act and the newly revised Kansas Act against discrimination on the state level. - Then in housing also, I think that I'd have to say that some minorities still feel that they have been discriminated against in housing because they'll call certain times and ask for a house that is being rented or a place that they can buy and then they'll be told after it's been in the paper or something that it's already been rented or sold. There's no way to prove these things, but there's still people that feel they've been discriminated against as far as housing. - Well, yeah, and Cynthia that's why I said that the fact that there have been so a few prosecutions under the existing housing ordinates really doesn't mean a lot because it's my understanding that one is required to file a complaint and all this sort of thing in order to get relief under the ordinance. And I suspect there are a lot of people who simply don't wanna go into all that trouble. They'd rather go find the house someplace else and rent and all that. - And in what way does the new proposed ordinance change that requirement? - I don't believe the new proposed ordinance changes that aspect of it. - You still have to file a complaint. - Still have to file a complaint. The biggest difference is as I read the ordinance is that it makes discrimination on the basis of sex and unlawful practice, which it hasn't been in the past, and also covers, in addition to people that rent and sell houses, they didn't cover such things as making real estate bonds which I understand and I can't speak from personal experience, but I understand that has been a real problem with a lot of women and it has been very difficult for single women to secure real estate loans in banks. - And it also gives the Human Relations Commission the power to initiate complaints. In a case where an individual may be able to establish that he was discriminated against, but for some reason, pertaining to his job or his... I don't know, for some reason, he may not be willing to file a complaint. The Human Relations Commission could, under the new ordinance, file it for him, and it can help more than the commission felt it could help an individual who felt aggrieved under the old ordinance. And of course, as the ordinance originally came to the commission, it came with not only the subpoena power to look into the records of a man selling 50 houses in a development, for instance, to see whether he had discriminated or, and it also came with the injunctive relief clause which would have enabled the commission, through the city attorney and the district court to stop a house from being sold when there seemed probable cause that someone was being discriminated against in the sale of that house. Now the ordinance doesn't have all those. - Well, let's clarify exactly who does make the decision as to whether or not there has been a discrimination practice. You say someone is bringing a complaint of discrimination, someone else undoubtedly saying, "No, I have not discriminated." How is the decision made? - The final decision? - Mm-hm. - Well, I think the intent of the ordinance is to first get the Human Relations Commission or the director of human relations to intervene in the situation and try to rectify the situation without any legal action. In the event that such intervention is unsuccessful, then as I read this, it's turned over to the city attorney and he goes to court over it, but that's the last resort. And I think the intent is that most of these things will be worked out without any legal action being taken. - So in this instance, works the same as the federal and the state law. The first effort is toward conciliation? - Mm-hm. - And one goes to court only if the conciliation fails? - Well, I don't know how the federal and state law work. - Well, the Human Relations Commission is empowered to hold a hearing. And if it determines that there is probable cause, apparently someone has discriminated, then they can, Human Relations Commission can try to persuade the party against whom the complaint has been filed to agree to a compromise or to agree to mend his ways, let's say, and then if they fail, they could go to court now. - And this would go to what court? - Well, as I read it, it could end up in district court. - Yeah, it certainly seems to be the district court the way it's written now. That's part of the judicial puzzle, I think. - Well, yeah, I'll tell you, there are several judicial puzzles about this thing. And that's one of the reasons why the city commission has clearly been trying to restudy this and how we get a pass in that this thing, once it's passed it's the law. I mean, this isn't a resolution of intent or anything like this. Once we pass it, it's the law, it's a city ordinance. And there are some loose ends in here that have not been sufficiently resolved to satisfy all people on the city commission and that's why we haven't passed the thing. And I might also say that we've had people at our public hearings who have told us that we ought to get on with it and get it passed and it was of vital importance to get it passed. Now I'm not arguing with that, but I think what's really of vital importance is to get a law passed that is a workable law, and that doesn't have a lot of loose ends and no one understands what they mean. So, the reason that we've had it before us for some time is trying to settle some of these things, find out what legal rights the city has. You know, cities kind of low man on the totem pole, after the federal government, the state government gets through exercising their rights, we have whatever happens to be left. And it's difficult sometimes to figure out exactly what these rights are. So there are some loose ends left in this that have not been completely resolved and that's the primary reason it hasn't been passed yet. - Have y'all worked with the human resource director? Although I know that it sort of fell in his lap because he is not the one that- - Yes, we've talked to him and, of course, we had a meeting with Human Relations Commission not too long ago and I'd like say one of the problems is that the ordinance in effect was drafted by the former human resources director and so was not pinned by the current human resources director. And so we're still trying to get the loose ends tied up on the thing and get some of these details worked out. - Do you have a different opinion, Cynthia, as to how long the work should be done among the loose- - Well, I just hope they get the loose ends tied because they- - You do see the importance of tying them up? - It's very important, it's very important, and that's the reason I was checking with him. I think of the human resource amendment at the present time is part of the works of human relations and the city commission should, I think you should, your own self, get together and find out what loose ends needs to be tied about that. - Well, one of the loose ends that needs to be tied is State of Kansas passed a law, the Anti-Discrimination Law, which became effective on the 1st of July- - Well, you mean the amendment to it? - Well, the most recent version, yes, it was amended. And some of these amendments, well, particularly, with the fair employment practices section of it, this, I hate to admit this, but this came as a bolt out of the blue to the city commission. And apparently our ordinance was drafted without anyone having knowledge that the state had passed the law. - Not anyone because the legislature passed it. - Well, without anyone on the local level knowing about it and then suddenly we found ourselves with a city ordinance that was drafted without knowledge of the state law being passed and some legal questions as to what our city ordinance could say in view of what the state law said. And this had been one of the hangups in recent days. - Well, the fact is, you know whatever we say, the city says, it certainly can be contradictory to what the state law because the state is over the city. But I think that there's certain areas that y'all need to get together and iron out. Because I really think that three, how many times we went for the city commission before then someone else has something to amend? Some of these amendments that they're talking about are very necessary while some of these, a couple that we have in here that stands for, let me see- - Well, I guess we've only been before the city commission twice when it was scheduled, when the ordinance was scheduled to be discussed and we may have gone down another time thinking it might come up unexpectedly. - Well, of course, one of the problems that we have is that our ordinance has to be in general compliance with state law, which it is not currently. And it was the ordinance that was presented to the city would not be in compliance with state law that became effective the 1st July. - You could make it more restricted but not less, isn't it? - That is the legal opinion we have, that our ordinance cannot be less restrictive than the state law. And as written, it is less restrictive than the state. - Because of the amount of contractors? - And because our affirmative action program refers only to construction contracts and the state law is a very broad state law. It refers to all contracts for goods and services of any amount purchased by any political subdivision of the state, which includes cities, school districts, counties, townships, noxious, weed control districts. There must be thousands of political subdivisions in the state that didn't- - Well, these are very strong . - Well on the books it's very strong. - But what's the problem? You say on the books it's strong, in what way is it - - The state law, as I understand it, the legislature did not see fit to appropriate additional money to hire more field representatives, I think they're called. We have a local man, as a matter of fact, who knew very well there was a state law in this field but apparently, he's never been consulted by either the human relation's staff or the city commission. It's Tom Moore works for the Kansas Civil Rights Commission and those field rep, he's one of the field representatives, they are all so overworked that they're seven months behind with complaints that come in and unless the legislature, the next legislature appropriates more money, they simply don't have the staff to check out the affirmative action plans submitted to all the political subdivisions. It would take a huge staff to do it. - That means, of course, that they have to pick and choose among the cases that they are going to- - Perhaps they could do spot checks. - Well, I would suggest that the city human relations and the city commissioners be in touch with Tom Moore and see what the, I think he should be on this. - We have had a letter from Tom Moore relative to this proposed ordinance. Now I can't recall everything that he said in it but he went through it section by section, told us some good points and some bad points. So there has been contact made but I don't believe this contact had been made prior to our last public meeting and this, I mean, it's because of things like this that we have elected to defer this for a period of time and make these contacts with the appropriate people and try to find out what about our ordinance is good, what about it is bad and try to come up with what will be a workable ordinance when it's passed. - You know, at the last meeting that this ordinance was discussed, a period of 10 days was established for people to bring in their suggestions. Is that still haltered? - Well, that 10 days has passed. - Well, whatever period of time it was, you said a time in which you said you wouldn't discuss it. Is that still on? What was it, the 17th? - Well, I think what we did was we said that we would solicit suggestions and comments from groups and individual citizens relative to this proposed ordinance. And we set a time limit within which we would like to receive these because one of the things is every time we hold a public hearing on this, people come down some new ideas and well, you reach a point where you gotta cut things off and say, "We're through considering new ideas, let's decide on the old ideas." So, the idea of that 10-day period was to give interested parties a period of time in which they could submit their ideas so that these can be considered by the city commission when we consider this ordinance. But obviously if we consider all of these ideas that have been suggested to us and then we hold a public hearing on it, and someone comes down with a completely new set of ideas, this can go on into perpetuity because there's no cutoff point. So, I think the idea there was to establish cutoff point and basically say, "If you're really interested in making an input into this, that you've got 10 days in which to do it and then let's get on and get an ordinance passed." So that 10-day period has passed. I don't know how much has come in. I talked to Mr. Samuel at the meeting of the Human Relations Commission and he indicated that he had not received much up to that point, that was last week. And I think roughly, I think more than a week of the 10 days was up at that point. - I think we said ever that Ray Samuel is our director of human resources and Carl Johnson is his half-time assistant, right? - Yes. - Is this item on the agenda for the commission on the 17th? - No, no, this item is not on the commission because we are trying to get together with some state officials to find out where we stand in relation to the state law. Now we wanna find out what the state intends to do to implement their law. For instance, the state law says that beginning July, 1, '72, everyone doing business with the state must fill out a form that gives their affirmative action program. We wanna find out what this form looks like, what the requirements are in it. We may, well, if they have a form that we feel is good, we may well copy that for our form. So, pending a resolution of these questions, we have deferred action on this particular ordinance because we wanna find out where we stand in relation to the state. We may well be visiting with some people other than the state on this. - Now, no one has called this question in, but I'm sure it must be in some people's mind. "Why do we need a municipal ordinance if we have a state ordinance?" - Well, I think that's a, it goes back to what was said about Tom Moore being seven months behind in his work. The story that's given to me is that the reason that we need a municipal ordinance is that the state and federal government are so far behind in this, that makes it very difficult for anyone who feels he's discriminated against to get action, and by the same token, it creates an unfair situation for the person who's being charged with the discriminatory practice, because the whole thing hangs prior for a period of months before any sort of final action's taken on. And the reason for wanting local ordinances is so that it can be handled in a more rapid manner on the local basis. And that's about it. Have you heard any other reasons why they want local ordinances? - No. - It's mainly a matter of time. - If we keep it nerval, Rubi will be able to stay before- - I think there was another very real reason, however, for a municipal ordinance and brings it down to the situation to the grass-roots level. The state must seem pretty far off to lots of people who feel they are discriminated against and that the more local rearrangements can be made, the more clear it will be to people that they can let somebody know if they feel that they've been discriminated against. - And I think it's better if it's a local law in this and I think even for the citizens here in Lawrence, I think that if something is passed here in the state, bar city commissioners, then the residents of Lawrence and especially the minorities here and the rest will feel they're part of the city. And they'll feel that the city feels that they have responsibility to them. So, I think anything that's done here in Lawrence is did with the city commissioners and human relations, I think it just brings the city closer together to share the problems and try to solve some of them. - And if Topeka seems far away, Washington must seem even farther from people who have some- - The catch phrase everyone is using is, "Justice delayed is justice denied," and on a job complaint or a housing complaint, when you have to wait seven months for an investigation and perhaps a year for a resolution of the case, justice is terribly delayed. - And most of what we have read in the paper and most of the discussion that we've heard does concern the fourth item about which we've spent very little time, the question of fair employment practice the reason we've spent relative little time on it is that that has been rather widely discussed. But I wonder if there's anything any of you care to say about this particular section of the act, the fair employment practice act. - Well, of course, that's the section of the ordinance that's new to us. It's in that we do not have such things present time. I think the hangup from the city commission's point of view at this time is what constitutes a workable affirmative action program? Now, I believe that some, or if not all of you ladies were at our last public hearing on this meeting, and as you know, we got different definitions at that meeting from the audience as to what constitutes an affirmative action program. And as of this time, I don't think all interested parties have been able to agree on what does, in fact, constitute an affirmative action program. So, at this point, we don't have a real definition of an affirmative action program. And then after you get the definition, you've gotta come up with some reasonable way to implement this affirmative action program. And something that is a concern to me and I think to some of the other commissioners is if there's great uncertainty about what the city is going to do with regard to an affirmative action program that it could well result in people who normally do business with the city and shying away. And the result would be that it cost us more contracts that we led to things of that nature. - Jack? - Yeah? - Let me ask this one question. Why would contractors shy away from the business when it says fair employment. If they're concerned about fairness to each human being, why would they shy away from the contract? - Okay, I think the reason they would shy away is that number one, we deal with a lot of relatively small contractors who have probably never in their life seen the affirmative action program. See, a lot of our contracts, we issue a lot of small contracts. If we pass an ordinance that says, "You're going to have to to give us an affirmative action program." But if we don't tell them what that affirmative action program is, in other words, we're telling them they have to do something but we won't tell them specifically what they have to do, then there's an uncertainty there. Now my own thing is, if we tell them specifically what this is, that there's no problem then, because you have removed the uncertain. But my feeling is that at the same time, we say that there is going to be an affirmative action program, we should say what that affirmative action program is. - As a part of the ordinance? - Well, or at least have the forms prepared so that people who are bidding on our work know exactly what is expected. As it stands, as this proposal understands, we could issue a contract and 30 days later, we could cancel that contract because a suitable affirmative action program has not been submitted and yet we are not in position right now to tell a contractor before he bids what an affirmative action program is. We can't even define it for him. - You could, of course, get a great deal of help with that by simply looking at the guidelines in the EOC, which spells out very specifically what an affirmative action means. - Well, it spells it out what it means on the federal level, but do we want to adopt the federal standards? I mean, if we're so happy with the way the federal government is running their program, why don't we let them do it instead of us? Well, obviously, we're not happy with that because of the time delays, because of the bureaucracy involved. We wanna do it at a local level because we don't think it's being done well at the Federal and state level. So why should we arbitrarily adopt their guidelines? I mean, if we think part of their program's bad, why should we assume that part of it's not bad? - Well, if I may answer that question since we have only a moment left, I'm afraid I will have to disagree with that. There's nothing wrong with their guidelines, and they have now been confirmed by the Supreme Court. And there's nothing about them that wouldn't fit equally well into a local situation which, as you say so often, deals with the middle man, the small contractor, the small supplier and the whole employment practice in the city itself. - But just let me say this real quick, like he's, yeah, I know you're concerned with the little contractor. We also should be concerned with the little man and that's the one that's not employed and the one that needs a job and does not have one. So you're gonna have to be concerned about all groups in the commissioners, as well as the little man that has a contract that he's gonna hire a certain group and also the man that doesn't have a job and- - That is completely right, Cynthia. And I think the only thing I'm saying is, I think we can accomplish what we seek to accomplish with this ordinance. And at the same time, we can not frighten off our small contractors if we go about it right. But if we go about it wrong, we are neither going to accomplish more employment and we're also gonna scare off our small contracts. So, all I'm saying is, we need to make sure that we have an ordinance that is a workable ordinance before we proceed. We need to know where we're going before we get started. And right now, the way this thing is written, we really don't know where we're going 'cause we can't even define affirmative action as things stand right now. The affirmative action is not defined in this ordinance. - That's true. I'm afraid that the our time is up. We appreciate very much Jack Rose, Cynthia Turner and Lee Ketsels joining us tonight as our guest panelists. I think the one thing in which everyone is in complete agreement is that the purpose of any of these acts is to make things fair for everyone who is as concerned with them and to improve the human relations in our city. Thank you for listening.