Montgomery County’s Office of Human Rights spent nearly $90,000 earlier this year on office renovations and new furniture that some employees said is a waste of taxpayer money.
The county spent $57,662.89 on construction costs to turn an archive room into a new conference room, county records show. The county also approved spending more than $39,000 on new furniture for the office, but officials said the final cost was about $31,000.
Some of the office’s employees said the office already had a “perfectly adequate” conference room and the extra spending was wasteful when the county is cutting jobs and trimming services. The county is currently considering a $30 million savings plan, and has an estimated budget gap around $400 million for the next fiscal year.
“I don’t like to see my tax money thrown away,” said Pete Mitchell, an investigator with the office who has complained about losing his window office and has lodged several other complaints against the office’s director, Jim Stowe.
Other employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they said they were scared of losing their jobs, also said they felt that Stowe’s spending was wasteful.
But a spokeswoman for County Executive Ike Leggett said the addition of an extra conference room was “critical” and the county used money saved through staff vacancies to pay for it.
Stowe said the location of the office’s old conference room posed a threat to the confidentiality of his office’s records and to his staff’s safety because outside individuals have to pass filing cabinets and staff members’ individual offices to get to the conference room. The new conference room sits across a hallway from the office’s main workspace on the third floor of the Rockville library.
The Office of Human Rights is tasked with investigating complaints of discrimination, and occasionally hosts mediations between opposing parties. Stowe said mediations can sometimes grow heated, and he wanted to put some space between his staff and potentially charged situation.
Safety concerns were also cited last year when the county approved $65,000 for building a new bathroom adjacent to Leggett’s office. Leggett drew flak for the expense during a time of budget cuts, but his staff said the bathroom was a necessary expense because his security detail didn’t want Leggett to have to go to a public bathroom.
