Jocelyn Benson’s office to pay $775,000 (of taxpayer money) to fire an employee

It’s your typ­i­cal sto­ry of gov­ern­ment waste: A gov­ern­ment employ­ee claims “dis­crim­i­na­tion,” and the gov­ern­ment sim­ply buys out the threat with our tax­pay­er dol­lars.

If the claims have mer­it, Joce­lyn Ben­son ran an office with dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices. If they don’t, she blew $775,000 instead of fight­ing a shake­down.

Either way, inex­cus­able.

The agree­ment in July was pre­ced­ed by legal action filed by Har­ness in May 2024. At that time, Har­ness filed a notice of intent to sue in the Michi­gan Court of Claims against the depart­ment, Ben­son and some depart­ment staff on the alle­ga­tions that Har­ness was sub­ject to a “racial­ly hos­tile envi­ron­ment” at her Detroit office.

She argued that, in Novem­ber or Decem­ber 2023, Christi­na Ander­son, Ben­son’s chief of staff, reduced her author­i­ty and duties with­in the Bureau of Cus­tomer Ser­vice, where she said she over­saw rough­ly 1,100 state depart­ment employ­ees.

Har­ness argued the depart­men­t’s actions were dif­fer­ent than its treat­ment of “sim­i­lar­ly sit­u­at­ed White and male cowork­ers” and that it was in part a response to her hir­ing of “African Amer­i­cans and protest­ing against their unlaw­ful dis­crim­i­na­to­ry treat­ment by the Depart­ment of State.”

The Depart­ment of State agreed to pay Har­ness $490,000, to pay her attor­neys $275,000 and to assign $10,000 to the redemp­tion of a work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion claim filed by Har­ness. She and her lawyer had to reg­is­ter as a ven­dor in the state sys­tem to accept the pay­ment.

Full sto­ry at the Detroit News.