Howell presents award to Kenneth L. Saunders

Distinguished Service Award to Kenneth L. Saunders

Presented by GLAA Secretary Craig Howell

GLAA 36th Anniversary Reception
Washington Plaza Hotel
Thursday, April 19, 2007

We at GLAA have been fighting for a stronger and more efficient Office of Human Rights ever since the mid-1990s, when we learned that severe staffing and budget cutbacks had crippled OHR so badly that it was routinely taking two and half years before they could even begin to investigate a complaint about illegal discrimination. We called not only for increased budget and staff but also for the re-establishment of OHR as an independent agency, led by someone with a professional background in civil rights law enforcement. Our efforts were rebuffed for years until Councilmember Kathy Patterson (aided by another of tonight’s DSA winners, Jason Juffras) cleverly used the Budget Support Act to restore OHR’s independence and professional leadership.

Since then OHR has steadily improved its operations and performance in numerous ways, notably under the man we honor this evening, Kenneth L. Saunders, who served as OHR Director under Mayor Williams from June 2003 until this year.

Ken met with other GLAA leaders and myself on a regular basis throughout his tenure, initiating many reforms and listening to our concerns and feedback. Among other things, he streamlined the adjudication process, aggressively attacked the backlog of aged cases that had been dragging down the agency for years, won the federal contract from HUD to administer the national Fair Housing Academy, took on the job for enforcing the District’s Language Access Act without sacrificing OHR’s on-going responsibilities, and pursued an energetic community outreach program to inform District residents about the protections available to all of us under the D.C. Human Rights Act of 1977 (DCHRA), arguably the strongest civil rights law in the country. We only recently learned that this past November, Mr. Saunders persuaded outgoing Mayor Williams to revise and update the executive order requiring all District government anti-discrimination policy statements to list all categories protected under the DCHRA, now including “gender identity and expression.”

To cite but one concrete measure of the results of Mr. Saunders’ labors: OHR’s case backlog (consisting of cases more than 9 months old), once seemingly locked in perpetuity well into the hundreds, is now only 75. Or to put the current situation into another perspective: If you go into OHR tomorrow morning and file a complaint, there is an 80 percent chance that OHR will reach a finding of probable cause (whether in your favor or not, of course) within 9 months. To me, that is a staggering accomplishment.

By rebuilding the District’s civil rights infrastructure and laying the groundwork for further advances by his successors, Mr. Saunders has helped to bring the District back to our rightful place as a national leader in adjudication and advocacy of human rights.

It is my great privilege to present GLAA’s 2007 Distinguished Service Award to Kenneth L. Saunders.