Racial discrimination case against the state drawing to a close

ALBANY — A federal lawsuit in which a longtime Medicaid fraud inspector is suing the state for alleged racial discrimination could go to a jury on Friday.

Glendon Griffith, a black immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago, filed a complaint against the state Office of Medicaid Inspector General in 2014 contending that he was denied promotions because of prejudice.

Near the end of a trial unfolding in U.S. District Court, attorneys for Griffith and the state spent much of Thursday morning questioning one of Griffith’s former supervisors, Maureen Howley, who has since retired from OMIG.

“He was a very nice man,” she said, adding that she didn’t view him as one of the more aggressive fraud investigators in the office. “He was adequate,” she said of his performance.

After a promotion in 2008, she said, he “struggled to manage the unit,” and was letting a case backlog grow to an unworkable level. As a manager he was supposed to process the paperwork from investigations in New York City to the main office in Albany so investigations could move forward.

“The unit was floundering. The paper just wasn’t being processed,” she said, explaining why he was then demoted.

Howley, though, also testified that Griffith had no performance evaluations in his folder. “I didn’t review his performance evaluations,” she said.

She had earlier told Griffith that “you need to know how Albany works,” in explaining why he hadn’t moved up the ladder.

When asked about that on Thursday, Howley said: “Albany had a big influence on the work he did.”

Howley also referenced a particularly chaotic period at OMIG during the lean budget years around 2009 and 2010 when a series of hiring freezes came and went, and when they had to terminate some contract investigators.

“There were so many freezes I was a little confused sometimes," she said. "There was no notification of when one ended and when one started.”

OMIG officials had, according to court papers, delayed another promotion for Griffith due to budgetary issues. But another applicant, who was white, was then promoted instead.

Griffith is being represented by Mark Walsh of Gleason, Dunn, Walsh & O’Shea in Albany.

He is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

rkarlin@timesunion.com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU

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