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City gets a kick to do better with complaints systemPaul Moloney
Posted by: | CommentsAt the urging of its new ombudsman, the City of Toronto plans to do a better job of telling citizens how to complain about problems they encounter with the city’s 50,000-person-strong bureaucracy.
In one of her first moves, ombudsman Fiona Crean asked all civic departments to forward copies of their processes for handling complaints from the public.
That was last December. She’s still waiting.
“We received good procedures from some, mediocre from others and none from yet others,” Crean told reporters Thursday. “Less than half the areas submitted processes or posted them on their website. Openness and accessibility was a problem even for those who had good procedures.”
Citizens must first seek redress from the relevant civic department before approaching the ombudsman’s office, on Elizabeth St. near city hall, but people often say the municipal public service just isn’t responsive to them, she said.
“I can’t tell you how many people said, `I never heard back from the city.’”
“So we’ll take the steps that are necessary to make sure that people have a well-understood point of access to approach the city with concerns they might have about a service, or a time frame in which a service was delivered. It’s completely reasonable.”
In 2009, the office received 1,057 inquiries and complaints and processed and closed 958 of them, or just over 90 per cent, she said.
As it began operations, the ombudsman’s office first focused on individual complaints. In 2010, Crean wants to turn her attention to solving systemic problems.
The first order of business is ensuring the government develops procedures to handle complaints and publicizes them.
People have been able to pursue complaints by speaking to a supervisor or, if that doesn’t get results, speaking to the division’s general manager, he said.
“There always has been a way to make your concerns known. What we’re doing now is formalizing that, making sure it’s documented and available publicly on websites and that the city communicates it more clearly.
“The goal, of course, is to deal with concerns people have as quickly as possible without the need to make a formal complaint.”
Ideally, municipal services should be provided in a way that doesn’t attract complaints, he added.
Complaints against DirecTV soar after A.G. charges “deceptive” practices
Posted by: | CommentsThe state attorney general’s office received more than 50 overnight complaints against DirectTV after Rob McKenna filed a lawsuit against the company for “deceptive and unfair practices.”
That follows hundreds of complaints filed against the satellite television business, which McKenna said Tuesday was a huge number for a company operating in the state.
“These guys are off the charts,” McKenna said in a meeting with reporters. “We’ve had more complaints about them than any other (company) in America this year. So they really do stand out.”
The California-based company is accused of attracting customers with ads for low prices that hide fees and rate changes. The attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit Monday in King County Superior Court alleging that DirecTV had repeatedly violated the state’s Consumer Protection Act.
California-based DirecTV is accused of wooing new viewers with ads for low prices while hiding a multitude of fees, planned rate changes and terms that call for automatic renewals. Following a year-long investigation by its Consumer Protection Division, the Attorney General’s Office filed documents today in King County Superior Court that allege the company has repeatedly violated the state’s Consumer Protection Act. McKenna wants the company to put its terms in writing.
The state attorney general’s office received more than 50 overnight complaints against DirectTV after Rob McKenna filed a lawsuit against the company for “deceptive and unfair practices.”
That follows hundreds of complaints filed against the satellite television business, which McKenna said Tuesday was a huge number for a company operating in the state.
“These guys are off the charts,” McKenna said in a meeting with reporters. “We’ve had more complaints about them than any other (company) in America this year. So they really do stand out.”
The California-based company is accused of attracting customers with ads for low prices that hide fees and rate changes. The attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit Monday in King County Superior Court alleging that DirecTV had repeatedly violated the state’s Consumer Protection Act.
California-based DirecTV is accused of wooing new viewers with ads for low prices while hiding a multitude of fees, planned rate changes and terms that call for automatic renewals. Following a year-long investigation by its Consumer Protection Division, the Attorney General’s Office filed documents today in King County Superior Court that allege the company has repeatedly violated the state’s Consumer Protection Act. McKenna wants the company to put its terms in writing.
“They’re telling people they can sign up for a low introductory rate of $29.99 a month for 12 months, but literally in the fine print at the bottom of the ad there’s this rebate process you have to go through in order to obtain the introductory offer,” McKenna said. “Here’s the trick. Once they install they equipment you’re on the hook for the minimum period of the contract of two years. If you decide it’s not satisfactory…(there’s) up to $480 cancellation fee…We’ve been telling DirectTV they need to clean up their act for a long time and they’ve refused to make the changes that we require.”
DirecTV, in a statement, refutes those charges.
“We always strive to provide 100 percent customer satisfaction,” the statement said. The company also said that the number of complaints in Washington state represent less than 1 percent of their customers here.
Was Gillette a rogue deputy or a good cop?
Posted by: | CommentsJohn Gillette was either a rogue deputy or a “squared away” cop whose way of doing business was a model for others in the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office.
Department brass have said Gillette was the latter, even after he had accumulated dozens of internal-affairs complaints. But 42 people — including accused criminals, people with no criminal records and law-enforcement officers — say in those complaints that, during more than 13 years as a sheriff’s deputy, Gillette acted as a law unto himself. His detractors say Gillette was a man with a penchant for profanity and roughness who crossed the line into criminal behavior
‘One of the worst cases’
By himself, Gillette racked up more complaints during his 13 years on patrol than the entire department generated in 2005, 2006 and 2007 combined. More than 70 deputies work for the Sangamon County sheriff’s department.
Based on the volume, seriousness and number of sustained complaints, Gillette should have been fired long ago, according to Samuel Walker, a University of Nebraska criminologist who is considered an expert on police misconduct.
Complaints can be a tool
Meyer and Walker said departments should use internal affairs complaints to help identify officers who need help.
Walker said the volume of complaints can be a tool to help figure out which officers need coaching, additional training or re-assignment. Meyer said departments can’t always go by complaint volumes — an officer assigned to DUI patrol, for example, is bound to get a fairly high number of complaints — but he blames himself for not doing more to help Gillette.
Williamson said he believes the department provides adequate help to employees with marital problems, psychological issues, alcohol-abuse problems or other issues that affect their work. The lack of psychological screening for new employees is due in part to the expense, Williamson said.
Williamson, who started the department’s internal-affairs division in 1997, has the final say on who gets hired. He said he requires prospective deputies to have a college diploma, and he interviews extensively before making a decision.
“This is one of the worst cases I’ve heard, just hearing his record,” Walker said. “This sounds, really, pretty shocking. This officer should have been long gone. There’s a really serious failure here.”
That view is shared by Stephen Meyer, former head of internal affairs for the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office, who said he would have fired Gillette if he’d had the authority.
“Given the frequency and severity (of complaints), there comes a time when the agency has to say ‘enough,’” said Meyer, who retired in 2001 but remains a sheriff’s chaplain. “I deemed law enforcement a profession. And you need to remove those who are not professional.”
Gillette, who is now working for a private entity (he declined to be more specific) in Afghanistan, called Meyer a “religious fanatic” who was out to get him and generated complaints by contacting people who had been arrested. While he admitted violating some rules, Gillette denied doing anything seriously wrong.
“The only thing I’ve been found guilty of is minor department infractions,” Gillette said in a telephone interview. “I’m not saying I’m an angel. It’s obvious that I’m not. I did a good job for the sheriff’s department, and we took a lot of bad guys off the street.”
Meyer said he never solicited complaints — when Williamson made him the department’s first head of internal affairs in 1997, the sheriff made it clear that he was to let complaints come to him, not go looking for them, Meyer said.
“My job would have been in jeopardy,” Meyer said. “The sheriff had said, ‘You will not solicit.’”
42 complaints
By October 2001, the number of complaints against Gillette stood at 28, with six of them sustained. He’d been a deputy for six years. Then the pace slowed. He was the target of 14 more complaints for the last eight years of his career with the county, with two of those — the complaint filed by Barr and the allegation of profanity by Anderson — sustained by the department.
A few things changed. Gillette was deployed to Iraq for a year in 2003 and won the Bronze Star, so he was off local streets. Meyer, who Gillette says was out to get him, retired in October 2001. And in September 2001, Lt. Patrick Davlin moved from the bureau of professional standards, which includes the department’s internal affairs division, and became supervisor of the midnight shift that included Gillette.
HUD to investigate landlord’s complaints against Belleville
Posted by: | CommentsA representative from the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, part of the Midwest regional office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, sent a letter to Belleville resident, landlord and business owner Rick Brown, acknowledging his complaint and announcing that the agency will complete an impartial investigation within 100 days. Brown received the letter, dated Aug. 14, through the mail Monday, and announced it to the council at its regular meeting Monday evening.
Mayor Mark Eckert, who has defended the city’s practices and said leaders have focused on strengthening neighborhoods, said it would be “premature” for him to comment on the federal HUD complaint, other than to say he had received correspondence Monday from HUD and that he would work with City Attorney Robert Sprague to prepare a response to the complaint.
The office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan also has confirmed an investigation of Brown’s allegations. Brown has notified the U.S. Department of Justice, though he hasn’t filed a formal complaint with that agency.
In Brown’s complaint, he accused city leaders of revising zoning ordinances to reduce the amount of minority residents and limiting rental opportunities for African-Americans. City leaders have said Brown’s allegations are not true.
Ethics complaints cost state nearly $2 million
Posted by: | CommentsThe cost of complaints just keeps adding up.
New numbers released from the governor’s office show the state has spent nearly $2 million investigating ethics complaints against Gov. Sarah Palin and her staff.
These numbers were released to back up Palin’s claim that these frivolous ethics complaints have cost taxpayers too much, and one state lawmaker hopes to help change that.
Before Palin announced she would be calling it quits, she noted that she and her staff have spent more time lately battling ethics complaints than doing state business.
“I have been accused of all sorts of frivolous ethics violations such as holding a fish in a photograph or wearing a jacket with a logo on it, and answering reporters’ questions,” Palin said.
Palin noted that all 15 were dismissed, but proving she was right has not been cheap.
A spreadsheet from the governor’s office shows more than $1.9 million was spent by various state agencies to handle ethics complaints and public records requests up until June 23.
“What’s happening now is people are filing what appear to be frivolous complaints,” Lynn said. “And it’s all over TV, it’s all over the radio, the newspaper and everything before they’ve had a chance to weigh in on it.”
Lynn says Palin’s popularity could be fueling more ethics complaints, and with his bill a case would only be made public if the charges are substantiated.
“It appears it is more for political agenda rather than trying to get to the bottom of some ethics complaint,” Lynn said.
Some have criticized Lynn, saying whether valid or not, a complaint should not be silenced.
“Everybody ought to have the right to file an ethics complaint, against somebody in the legislature or the administration,” Lynn said. “But it should not be done with a political agenda it should be done because they think something is really there.”
Palin says ethics complaints led to resignation
Posted by: | CommentsGov. Sarah Palin, three days after abruptly announcing she would resign as governor, said Monday that she did it because ethics complaints and politically ambitious state legislators would have been paralyzing.
“Especially when all these lawmakers are lining up for office. Their desire would be to clobber the administration left and right so that they can position themselves for office. I’m not going to put Alaskans through that,” the governor said, wearing a Cabela’s fishing bib as she stood on a Bristol Bay beach outside Dillingham.
Palin, who will hand power over to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell on July 26, said she was particularly frustrated by the ethics complaints filed against her and costs and time involved for the state in dealing with them.
“It’s a combination of things that has brought me to this place of knowing. I love Alaskans too much to put them through a lame duck session heading into my final year in office; I was going to be honest and tell them I’m not going to run for re-election. I’m not going to let Alaskans go through a year of stymied, paralyzed administration and not getting anything done. I’m going to let Sean Parnell take this and we will see that things will let up,” she said.
Gov. Sarah Palin has paid more than $8,100 to reimburse Alaska for the costs associated with nine trips taken with her children.
Palin’s attorney, Thomas Van Flein, says the governor paid $8,143.62 to the state on June 19 for the nine trips, some with more than one of her five children, taken between January 2007 and February of this year. The payment was due Tuesday.
An ethics complaint had alleged Palin abused her power by charging the state when her children traveled with her. The Alaska Personnel Board found no wrongdoing, but Palin agreed to reimburse the state for trips found to be of questionable state interest.
Palin was the Republican vice presidential candidate when the complaint was filed and after the February settlement she called the grievance “an obvious political weapon.”
As part of the settlement, the Alaska Department of Law was asked to develop specific rules clarifying when the state should pay for a governor’s family travel. That effort is under way, with the goal to have a final draft by the end of the year, according to Judy Bockmon, an assistant attorney general.
Also on Tuesday, the governor’s office announced the 15th dismissal of an ethics complaint against Palin or one of her staff. It alleged Kris Perry – director of the governor’s Anchorage office
worked on state time to benefit Palin’s interests during and after her vice presidential run.
The governor’s office said the complaint was filed even after Perry obtained an opinion from Perez, her ethics supervisor.
“It is outrageous to file an ethics complaint against a state employee who sought and obtained ethics guidance in advance,” Mike Nizich, Palin’s chief of staff, said in a statement. “This is not about ethics. This is not about holding the governor or state employees accountable. This is pure harassment
Attorney General Files Complaints Against Car Warranty Callers
Posted by: | Commentshe Attorney General’s office has filed two more lawsuits in federal court against companies believed to be placing illegal telemarketing calls about car warranties to Arkansas consumers.
The lawsuits were filed Tuesday against Explicit Media Inc. of Florida and SVM Inc. of Nevada, according to a news release from the AG’s office.
They are the latest in a string of lawsuits filed against telemarketing companies purporting to offer automobile warranties to consumers.
The most recent complaints detail multiple violations of both federal and state telemarketing laws: making calls to Arkansans listed in the Do Not Call database; “robo-calling,” or using prerecorded messages for commercial purposes; and caller ID “spoofing,” displaying false or misleading telephone numbers on consumers’ caller ID systems.
After 24 Years of Unusual Complaints, BBB Leader to Exit
Posted by: | CommentsThe woman who complained about the lack of curls atop her cone of Dairy Queen ice cream stands out.
Then there was the one about the Athens rancher who believed the government used fertilizer as a mind-control weapon.
During her 24 years as the president of the Better Business Bureau in Tyler, Kay Robinson has seen the unusual, the funny, the frightening and the tragic.
Now, Ms. Robinson has her sights set on retirement, which she announced this past week.
“I think I worked myself out of a job,” she joked Friday from her Old Bullard Road office. “The staff knows how to do everything. They don’t need me anymore.”
Ms. Robinson, 73, signed on as the BBB office’s president when it was created in 1985.
Today, the office boasts 1,823 members spread across 19 East Texas counties.
The office also has seen its share of scoundrels and scams, carried out by shady business owners taking advantage of the gullible.