Complaint: Former Trempealeau official feels firing, non-promotion was discrimination

A former employee has filed a formal discrimination complaint against the Village of Trempealeau, according to state records.

Roxroy Barrett, whose job as the village’s planning and zoning director was eliminated last July after being hired in 2018, has filed the complaint through the state Department of Workforce Development’s Equal Rights Division (ERD).

Barrett believes the elimination of his position and his subsequent firing were the result of discrimination based on his age, race and skin color, according to the complaint filed by Barrett’s attorney, Richard Rice.

The Trempealeau Village Board discussed the complaint for about 30 minutes in closed session at its Feb. 2 meeting, but no action or discussion occurred when they returned to open session.

Part of Barrett’s firing included the creation of a village administrator position, which was filled by then-treasurer Isaac Pooler. 

The creation of this position had been considered by the village board for months prior to the July decision.

An April 2021 assessment suggested changes to the Village’s administration setup, and Barrett expressed interest in filling the village’s administrator position if one was created, according to the complaint.

Pooler was hired in July of that year as treasurer.

When hiring for the treasurer/deputy clerk position last July, the village board wanted to have a candidate who could move into the administrator position if the village chose to pursue the change, Wood told the Times last July. 

No promise of the position was ever made to Pooler, Wood said.

“Mr. Barrett worked diligently for the Village of Trempealeau in many capacities along with in different persons who held the village treasurer position during his employment, such that he was familiar with the overall government and business operation of the Village,” the complaint reads.

Barrett learned in the final months of 2021 that some village board members wrongly believed he was about to leave his job in the village despite Barrett never saying so, according to the complaint. Barrett instead showed “continued interest” in the pending administrator position throughout 2022, according to the complaint.

“Unexpectedly on July 21, 2022, Mr. Barrett was informed that his position was being eliminated so he was being terminated and that the younger, White male treasurer would become the village administrator,” the complaint reads.

“Mr. Barrett believes that the Village’s failure to not promote him to the village administrator position and his termination were race, color and age discrimination.”

Village President Kurt Wood declined comment on the complaint last week, saying board members were advised by legal counsel not to speak on the subject.

Last July, Wood said the board created the position because the Village wanted a clear leader instead of multiple administrators.

“Having that one person that the village residents can go to, that the employees can go to, rather than somebody trying to get a hold of me during the day or one of the committee chairs, that they have someone to go to because that person’s going to be here during the day,” Wood told the Times then.

It is not known whether Barrett was ever given the opportunity to interview for the administrator position.

Barrett was hired shortly after the Village went away from an administrator system about five years ago in order to try a new system of having three separate leaders in a clerk, a treasurer and a planning & zoning director, Wood previously told the Times, adding that the three-head system hadn’t worked as well as the village hoped.

“It’s always a leap of faith when you make decisions like this because it affects people’s lives, and when it’s a negative effect, we all feel it,” Wood said in July. “They (the board) know we’re making the right decision, but at the same time we know that it’s affecting somebody negatively.”

“It’s not easy.”

The original complaint was filed on Nov. 30, 2022 and indicates the village was required to respond within 30 days of that date for an investigation to take place.

The village had 300 days from the filing of the complaint to file objection, according to the documents shared with the Times.

A copy of the complaint was obtained by the Times through an open records request to the Department of Workforce Development (DWD) last Wednesday, Feb. 15 after an original request for a copy of the complaint was denied earlier this month by village attorney Jerilyn Jacobs of law firm Crivello Carlson S.C.

The records request was sent by the Times to both the village and DWD on Jan. 31.

Jacobs wrote in a Feb. 3 email that the Times’ request for the complaint was denied “as it seeks a record containing personally identifiable information that is collected or maintained in connection with a complaint, investigation or other circumstances that may lead to an enforcement action, administrative proceeding, arbitration proceeding or court proceeding.”

Legal counsel for the newspaper indicated that this exemption from open records laws would only apply to employees, which does not include high ranking public officials in local office.