Gloria D. Gray is under fire from colleagues for failure to appoint more persons of color, and women to water agency committees after saying her appointment represented “diversity”.
Metropolitan Water District Chairwoman Gloria Gray is under fire for her lack of “diversity” when it came to her choices for appointees to the boards various committees.
The TIMES is reporting Gray’s proposed slate of 12 committee chairs and vice chairs, as well as four vice chairs of the MWD board of directors caused a kerfuffle amongst the boards 38 members.
Some of the district’s 38 board members said they were opposed because they thought the appointees didn’t reflect the diversity of Southern California, didn’t adequately represent the largest urban areas or wouldn’t be the best mix of leaders to tackle issues from water affordability to reducing reliance on imported water.
One of her colleagues wrote Gray a letter, pointing out she was attempting to appoint more white person than those of color.
“By my count, you are proposing to appoint 19 white persons and 8 persons of color (if one counts the double appointments individually) to the positions of Committee Chair and Vice Chair. You also are seeking to appoint 16 men and 8 women by similar count for those positions. These disparities are inconsistent with any measure one might apply. It does not reflect the diversity of MWD’s service area, the State of California, or even the United States,” wrote Sylvia Ballin, councilwoman from San Fernando.
“Of the 28 positions you are appointing, 21 of the nominees did not support the hiring of the current General Manager just a few months ago. This represents a 3 to 1 margin over those you are seeking to appoint who voted with the majority to hire the General Manager. This is significant for reasons that have immediate implications,” continued Ballin. “For example, you are proposing to appoint as Chair of the Audit and Ethics Committee, a board member who recently hired a person who engaged in retaliation when he worked at MWD. According to the Ethics Officer who addressed this matter on January 11, that was fully substantiated in a supplemental investigation by the Shaw Group, and has yet to be released to the MWD Board of Directors. The conflict of interest in this case, some would argue is glaring.”
In an interview with DiversityProfessional.com Gray lauded her appointment as Chairwoman of Metropolitan Water as “representing diversity”.
“Metropolitan is over 90 years old and this industry is basically seen as a closed industry and mostly representative of older white men,” she says. “My chairmanship represents diversity. Diversity, inclusion and equity are important in all sectors as well as in the water industry. It brings about a better product and system when you have diversity of thought and perspective.”
What’s up with Black elected officials discriminating against their own, especially when campaigning on a platform saying the direct opposite?
Read the full article on LATimes.com.
1 Comment
It took a while to find the list but there it is on the Metropolitan Water District website the Special meeting of Jan 2022.
What Sylvia Ballin has to say should be viewed through the lenses of who she is. That would be one of five council members in the City of San Fernando all of whom are Hispanic/Latino, she is one of the four females. Transparent California most recent listing of employees is 189 only 20 of which seem to have non-Spanish surnames..
HMMMMM…….
Since all the water district appointments should represent 19 million residents of the water district (as opposed to the 24,000 residents of the City of San Fernando), perhaps Ms Ballin should have considered that not all of those cities are 92% Hispanic/Latinix as her home city.
Here’s the deal hating on males in particular speaks more about who Ms Ballin is than who Ms Gray is.
No decision should be made based solely on anatomy or heritage ! Every decision should be based on so much more – how about considering the vast and differing territory, the diversity within the several cities, how about regional growth personal background, skill-set, education.
For Ms Ballin to not consider that not all “whites” are the same makes her oh so foolish – Is the Irish Catholic the same as the Hungarian Jew, or perhaps that old Swede in her view is just like that Orthodox Greek, what a foolish, self revealing not only racist but also gender unappreciative person. Here’s the deal not all females are focused on water policy some have gone into medicine, education, film making, art, electronics, technology. In fact there are only 3016 certified Hydrologist in the United States 92% white and 7% Asian of which only 30% are female.. Historically men have been educated in the engineering field and until the new up and coming female engineers have some experience Most would not be willing to trust our water to the new inexperienced kids on the block.
So while Gloria Gray has made many decisions we may disagree with- at least in the list of directors she put forth on the list which Ms Ballin is wanting us to find fault in,….there is diversity from throughout the region served yes- male, female, Hispanic and an assortment others. Would Ms Ballin want us to say hey even though there are few African Americans living in San Fernando the Police Department there should be a minimum of 50% African American and 30% Asian -some might think that a tad unrealistic.
If she doesn’t like any one of the candidates for reasons other than their heritage and sex Ms Ballin should have been able to say – that one only has a 3rd grade education, can’t read staff reports, or the other one doesn’t drink or bathe with water so they can not comprehend water importance or maybe something more like her community -that one is romantically involved with that one.
Gloria like each of our elected should NEVER get a free pass but let us be upset with her decisions based on truth rather than racism…..hmmm……how about her silence re the Mayor’s inappropriate relationship with an employee.