Report 2021-104 Recommendation 9 Responses

Report 2021-104: Metropolitan Water District of Southern California: Its Leadership Has Failed to Promote Transparency or Ensure a Fair and Equitable Workplace (Release Date: April 2022)

Recommendation #9 To: Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

To ensure that the EEO office has appropriate jurisdiction over EEO complaints, by June 2022 MWD should develop written procedures for handling potential threats to impartiality in investigations. These procedures should contain explicit conditions in which a party other than the EEO office, such as the ethics office or the general counsel's office, plays a lead role in an EEO complaint.

60-Day Agency Response

Metropolitan developed written procedures for investigations to protect impartiality. The procedures are included in the updated H-07 (Equal Employment Opportunity) and H-13 (Sexual Harassment Prohibition) policies, which were presented to its Board on April 26, 2022 at the Organization, Personnel and Technology Committee meeting.

The EEO policy specifically lists the circumstances in which a party other than the EEO office plays a lead role in an EEO complaint.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Fully Implemented

MWD's updated EEO and sexual harassment policies specify the circumstances in which a real or perceived threat to impartiality means the EEO office should not investigate complaints. The policies define some such threats and appropriately give the EEO officer (as opposed to another party) the responsibility for assessing whether such threats exist in other situations. In all such instances, the policy names the ethics office as the party responsible for conducting the investigations. As such, if MWD follows this new policy, the EEO and ethics offices are the only parties that should be administering or overseeing investigations into employee complaints.

All Recommendations in 2021-104

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.