15 October 2023
The first in-person meeting of the new St. Paul Recovery Act Reparations Commission opened like an office party. The Aug. 17 meet-and-greet was led by St. Paul City Council member Russel Balenger, who introduced a young City Hall employee as the future face of the council’s predominantly-Black commission. To the surprise of several of those assembled, their sole new staffer was Asian.
Within less than a week, a Hmong woman who had been offered the only paid staff position on the council’s newest commission found herself facing a street protest led by the very people she was hired to represent.
On the heels of unexpected pushback from several of the city’s most longstanding Black leaders, Jenny Lor declined or resigned the position the next day, even before it officially started, with questions swirling around how Lor — who had served on a hiring panel for the position — got the job and who else had applied.
“It didn’t really have anything to do with her personally,” said St. Paul Public Schools board member Chauntyll Allen, a leading voice in the Aug. 22 speak-out outside City Hall. “I know her. I think she’s a great person, and a really good organizer. I think it’s very important in reparations work for a Black person to be leading that charge. … Every morning, I wake up and my ancestors tell me I have work to do. It needs to be someone who has experienced, or has the ancestors who experienced, what we’re fighting for.”
Lor, an aide to Ward 6 council member Nelsie Yang, could not be reached for comment, and Yang last week referred all questions regarding the matter to Brynn Hausz, the director of city council operations. Lor did not return calls seeking comment on the matter.
Records and interviews with key City Hall officials show the hiring imbroglio dates back to January, five months before the make-up of the commission itself was announced.
When the city council advertised for a new staffer late last January, the city’s Human Resources department forwarded 11 names to a screening committee composed of city staffers, who then interviewed their five favorites, further whittling down the pool for a smaller hiring committee made up of city council members and senior staffers.
No one on the initial screening committee — Hausz, Marcia Moermond, Shari Moore, Adam Yust and Lor — identified as Black. The only Black person on the council’s hiring committee was Balenger.
41 applications received
The advertised position, a senior policy analyst, would host a dual role, staffing a new commission devoted to the topic of racial reparations, while also serving in an unrelated position as the primary point of contact for the city’s 17 neighborhood district councils. The staff position, coordinated by the city council with little to no involvement of the mayor’s office, would pay between $81,000 to $110,000 annually.
Lor served on the five-member screening committee that interviewed five of the applicants forwarded by Human Resources. The candidates were Tonja Lee, Nila Gouldin, Quinn Doheny, Amane Badhasso and Carolina Amini.
In April and May, two finalists — Lee and Amini — went on to be interviewed separately by the smaller committee of senior staff and city council members. Neither ended up with the job, though it’s unclear if an offer was made and the candidate declined.
“Hiring processes have a lot of confidentiality around them, so I can’t say why we didn’t move forward,” said Hausz, who convened much of the hiring process for the council. “That’s all private data.”
The position was reposted online in June through early July, drawing 29 applications, and the screening process started again from the beginning, Hausz said. On two dates in July, the staff screening committee met with applicants Jenna Simmons, Demian Moore, John Skonieczny and Lindsey Bacher, none of whom are Black. Again, no one ended up with the job.
Instead, Lor — who had participated in screening applicants for months — dropped out of the screening committee and became an applicant herself. Hausz asked fellow members of the hiring committee if they felt comfortable forwarding her name to the city council members for consideration without having her interview with the same committee she had served upon. All agreed.
“Because she had been in with this group from the start of the year talking about this position, I touched base with each individual member of the hiring committee and we agreed to move her on to (interview with) the council members,” Hausz said.
One week from hired to decline
On Aug. 15, Lor met council member Mitra Jalali and Balenger, who was appointed to the council a year ago, as well as Hausz and Moermond, who is a legislative hearing officer and senior policy analyst. Council member Rebecca Noecker, who had previously been a member of the hiring committee, was not in attendance for reasons she could not immediately recall but said she may have been traveling.
Lor has “been a great colleague, a great legislative aide,” said Noecker this month. “I’m really sorry this has gone down this way for her.”
The next day, the four interviewers unanimously agreed to hire Lor to the position, said Hausz.
Balenger introduced Lor to members of the council’s reparations commission as their new city staffer during a meet-and-greet with his office the day after that — Aug. 17, a Thursday. Some members of the commission said they were taken aback, if not offended outright. At least one of the former applicants for the position introduced themselves, expressing surprise that she had gotten the job over them, according to those who attended the event.
A street protest involving some 15 to 20 people began five days later. Moments before the Aug. 22 meeting of the county board, Ramsey County Commissioner Rena Moran spoke tearfully to her fellow board members about losing voice as a Black woman who had once been a homeless single mother.
Some protesters pointed to the history of families and business owners displaced from the historically-Black Rondo neighborhood by construction of Interstate 94 in the 1960s.
“There are numerous African-American applicants — even from Rondo — who applied for the job and did not get the job,” said Tyrone Terrill, president of the African American Leadership Council, at the time. “It’s an insult to us. They should be a descendent of Rondo so they truly understand what it means to be uprooted.”
In an interview the next day, Jalali noted that Lor had been subjected to a torrent of “online harassment” and “negative attention” from community members since that weekend, much of it heavily abusive. Jalali said she otherwise had no inside knowledge about what led to Lor being interviewed for the position, as the process was managed by Hausz. It was unclear if Lor had been recruited for the job or applied unbidden. Hausz said she couldn’t comment on the process on advice of the city attorney.
Some members of the reparations commission — which was appointed by the council in June — expressed frustration that they were not included in the hiring process, and some said they were unaware it was even taking place. The city had taken out paid national ads on LinkedIn and Indeed, and listed the position in newsletters, on social media, and with the League of Minnesota Cities, Job Connect MN, MN’s Job Bank, Pollen Midwest and Handshake.
Commission members began to question why the position had not been better circulated through their membership and shared with Black-led organizations like the St. Paul NAACP, the African American Leadership Council and the Twin Cities Urban League.
“It would have been good if we could have gotten the commission in place first, and then started this hiring process,” said commission member Nate Khaliq, president emeritus of the St. Paul NAACP.
A city council apology
On Aug. 24, exactly a week after Lor had been introduced to the reparations commission as their new staffer, the city council issued a joint public apology concerning both the hiring process and the mistreatment that Lor had suffered, noting she had withdrawn herself from consideration for the position.
“This Council and its central staff would like to acknowledge and apologize for the pain caused in the course of this process,” read the statement. “We have heard the feedback given by the community and are actively working to better serve this critical work. This includes revisiting the design of this role and its duties and having conversations in the near future with commissioners and concerned community members to repair trust and align on shared vision for this work.”
“We acknowledge that our staff person has also been deeply affected by this situation and apologize for the negative scrutiny they have received as a result of our actions. They have declined this role, and we ask that their privacy be respected at this time.”
Council member Jane Prince, who had been active in launching the reparations commission, said she was unaware Lor had been hired until the news became public. “I’ve been working on this since 2019,” said Prince this month, noting she had not been invited to participate in the hiring committee and had been largely shut out of the process. “My input was not of any value to the group.”
Prince said she was working with Balenger to rewrite the position, which has yet to be advertised anew. “Hopefully, we’re going to be able to advertise it soon,” she said.
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