Members of Vermont’s legal community are taking issue with a Burlington City Council candidate’s assertion that Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George discriminated against him when she fired him late last month.
The candidate, Abdullah Sall, plans to file a lawsuit against George, who dismissed him shortly after she took office. Sall’s attorney, John Franco, said his client — a black Muslim immigrant from Liberia — “was subject to different treatment than other people in the office who did not share those qualities.”
“That’s just so absurd. Just absolutely absurd,” countered Stacy Graczyk, who served as a deputy state’s attorney from March 2013 until September 2016 and worked with both Sall and George. “If anything, I think all of those things are an asset. As you know, Vermont is ridiculously white. All those things were great to have in an office. You want diversity.”
Graczyk said Sall was not a good fit for the job, which is “sort of like the front line.” Her former colleagues gave Sall many chances, Graczyk said, but after a while, “it was becoming a concern.”
Two other members of the Chittenden County legal community — who spoke on condition of anonymity — backed up Graczyk’s story, arguing that Sall’s job performance was lacking.
With Sall, there were “huge errors made on a regular basis,” said one attorney who routinely interacted with the legal assistant during his seven-month tenure in the Chittenden County State’s Attorney’s Office. Sall’s accent — which Franco said was a reason he was fired — was not an issue, the attorney said. As for the firing, there is “absolutely no question in my mind that it was merit-based,” the attorney added.
A third source who worked with the parties involved said, “I did hear a lot of complaints about him.” As for George: “She is fair to everyone. She does not have a bias. She’s by the book.”
Franco told a different story last week.
“He was summoned into a meeting with [George] … and was told, without any warning, that he was being terminated because of too many mistakes; people didn’t understand him because of his accent; and he didn’t understand people who spoke to him,” Franco alleged.
George declined to comment on specifics of the allegation last week because of the expected litigation.
“I would say that anytime an employer has to make a decision, it’s guided by performance, the needs of the office and the law,” she said. “And I followed those principles when making my decision.”
Then-Chittenden County state’s attorney T.J. Donovan hired Sall as a legal assistant in June 2016. The two clicked in the fall of 2014 when Sall was a student in Donovan’s restorative justice class at Community College of Vermont. Donovan says he found Sall to be curious and engaging. He later chose his former student to fill an internship at the state’s attorney’s office before hiring him to the full-time position.
“He needed a foot in the door,” Donovan said in a January interview, before Sall was fired. Sall turned out to be a hard worker, he added.
As a legal assistant, Graczyk said Sall would “get all the phone calls, people coming in, phone calls from the court, the public, police officers, victims,” she said. “You’re sort of fielding, directing traffic, and they have all sorts of other administrative duties.”
The position requires multitasking and can be demanding, according to Graczyk.
“I think at the beginning you make allowances for people because it is a difficult job,” she said. “I think everybody just thought, ‘Well, he’s new. He’ll catch on. Give him some time.’”
There never seemed to be improvement, Graczyk said, and people inside — and outside — the office began to take notice.
“Is he competent for this position? Is it going to work out?” she said. “That front office, when things fall apart in that front office it just wreaks havoc throughout the office — with everything — the court, the police.”
Sall’s job required him to file incoming arrest warrants and send the documents to police, prosecutors and the court.
“Cops would call a week or two or longer later asking what happened with the warrant they sent in, and we’d find they’d never even been sent to the court,” Graczyk said. “Sometimes it appeared he was making copies and then just putting them in a file in the filing cabinet — never having sent them anywhere. This creates a significant liability issue for the office.”
Added Graczyk: “They are still finding missing arrest warrants and files that are supposed to be closed and haven’t been — some six months old.”
Sall was well-liked, she said, but his job performance left much to be desired.
“He’s just a super nice guy, and I think throughout the whole time he was there, these problems that were going on, those of us talking about it, we just felt so bad about it because you really liked him as a person and you felt guilty for complaining about it,” Graczyk said.
Reached by phone Monday, Sall admitted he made mistakes his first week on the job and even his first month, but he denied he ever “sat on any affidavit.” He said no one ever complained about his performance during his tenure. He said he wants an investigation to find examples of things he had done wrong.
“Why, if I wasn’t doing a great job, did they only ever tell me ‘You’re doing a fantastic job?’” he asked. “If they were praising me then and now they’re saying I did wrong, they must be a hypocrite, right?”
Franco on Monday called the criticism “interoffice gossip.”
“I take it with a grain of salt,” he said.
The state’s attorney’s office is a hire- and fire-at-will office, meaning a termination does not require a drawn-out proceeding. But Franco said Sall completed a six-month probationary period and had not been written up for poor work performance.
Before Sall files a lawsuit, Franco needs consent from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a process that could take months.
“Sure, he may have misfiled stuff,” said Franco. “But the question in an employment case is if the black guy was doing his job any worse than anyone else in the office.”
Sall is currently running for the South District seat on the Burlington City Council under a motto “dignity and transparency.” The independent is facing off against longtime incumbent Democratic Councilor Joan Shannon and Progressive challenger Charles Simpson.
“I know I am the underdog,” Sall said during a January interview. “I have faith in the people of Burlington. They will see beyond party lines and vote for substance.”
Sall wants to bring more transparency to the council, which he described as being “full of people who are too comfortable in their position of power.”
As the city becomes more diverse, he said, it’s important to include different voices in policy making. “I bring experience that none of the council has — the immigrant experience living in liberal Vermont,” he said at the time, suggesting the state is anything but.
“If I’m not hated for being black, I’m hated for being Muslim. If I’m not hated for being Muslim, I’m hated for being an immigrant. I can’t escape anything,” Sall added.
In a later interview, Sall misled Seven Days when asked directly about his employment status, saying he still worked in the office. When pressed on the issue last week, he said he was under orders from Franco to refrain from discussing his job as the attorney worked to get Sall reinstated.
After Seven Days reported last week on the forthcoming lawsuit, Sall responded on Facebook to several people who commented about the story.
“I’m shocked to come and read assholes who don’t know me saying shits about me,” he wrote in one reply. “What you need to know folks I was born a free man. I expect to be treated with respect and dignity and I am not to going to take less from hateful men or women at the down street or at workplace.”
Sall’s friendship with Donovan carried over to the campaign trail last year. He never was a paid worker, but he carried a sign supporting the Democratic attorney general candidate during a Fourth of July parade and was “around on election night,” according to Donovan.
“He wanted to help and I was happy to have him,” the AG said.
Donovan won election in November and took his new post in early January.
Gov. Phil Scott swore in George, who had served as deputy state’s attorney since 2011, as state’s attorney on January 20.
Sall was fired a week later.
“She was on the job for five working days and she fired the black guy for the job performance that the former boss considered to be adequate!” Franco said.
Graczyk, who now works as an attorney with the state Office of Child Support in Burlington, does not think George discriminated against Sall. Rather, she said, she and colleagues wondered: “Is he being set up to fail by being put in this position?”
“It was a problem that needed to be dealt with. And you knew that whoever was going to be appointed to that position would have to deal with that problem.” She added: “People complained about it.”
Reached for comment last week, Donovan would not discuss the situation because he could be subpoenaed in connection to a lawsuit. He called Sall and George “good people.”
“I consider them friends. I care about both of them,” Donovan said. “I hope this gets worked out.”
Paul Heintz contributed reporting.
Disclosure: Stacy Graczyk is married to Seven Days staff writer Ken Picard.
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Once ‘The Bar’ is lowered all the way to the ground that’s it.
One of the differences between journalism and litigation is that in litigation there are no unnamed sources you get to confront and cross-examine your accusers. At least Stacy Graczyk had the decency to go on the record. Your other sources should either have the decency to do the same when making accusations like this, or shut up.
You want to know what racial discrimination looks like in the 21st Century? This is what it looks like. The stereotypical perceptions of white people saying that the black guy wasn’t up for the job, and was getting special treatment, and that the bar was lowered as the previous commentator has said. Other anonymous accusations that we have received have included that he had “highly problematic interactions with female co-workers” (sounds like Blazing Saddles) with issue ranging from flirting to requests that non-Muslim women adhere to Muslim dress codes, disrespectful interactions with female employees about job responsibilities, and a failure to heed mentoring about his interactions with white women. Then there are the mundane claims including that he was playing video games on the office computer. Get out the axe handles!
Worst of all, it will be white people who will be the final arbiters of this. Put yourself in Abdullah’s shoes and ask yourself how you would feel.
– John Franco
John Franco writes “You want to know what racial discrimination looks like in the 21st Century? This is what it looks like. The stereotypical perceptions of white people saying that the black guy wasn’t up for the job”
Or of course, it could be, as the evidence here indicates, that the black guy actually wasn’t up for the job.
“Or of course, it could be, as the evidence here indicates, that the black guy actually wasn’t up for the job.”
Not being good at the job never stopped a disappointed ex-employee from pursuing a lawsuit, or a plaintiff’s attorney from taking the case and screaming discrimination or wrongful termination.
And this is what the guy who says he wasn’t fired for performance reasons writes on a public Facebook post?
“Im shocked to come and read assholes who dont know me saying shits about me, he wrote in one reply. What you need to know folks I was born a free man. I expect to be treated with respect and dignity and I am not to going to take less from hateful men or women at the down street or at workplace.”
I’m curious whether Attorney John Franco believes there is *ever* a scenario in which a white supervisor may fire a black employee for performance issues or otherwise, or whether it is even possible, in Franco’s mind, for a black Muslim male to act in a sex-based discriminatory manner towards a white female.
It should be argued, of course, that Muslims are people, too, who are capable of excellent and poor performance, just like everyone else. Muslims are people, too, who are capable of treating people with dignity or with discrimination, just like everyone else. Abdullah may or may not be justified in his lawsuit; a Court will determine that based on the facts. But blatantly false are any assertions that black/Muslim/immigrant individuals cannot be fired for their performance, or that Muslim individuals should get a free pass on sexual harassment based on their race/religion/immigration status.
Essentially, you have women complaining of sexual harassment, so are you claiming an exemption for the accused based on his race/religion/immigration status? Are you actually going so far as to account entirely for the women’s stories as mere perception based on racial discrimination?”
If this is your claim, aren’t you blaming the victims? If so, this gives liberals a terrible name and cements the rabid Right’s platform. That doesnt help our cause as rational liberals, instead reducing us to our most extreme and unreasonable.
John Franco probably has an OK case but perhaps for the wrong reasons. If you talk to lawyers who specialize in labor and employment law or to human resources professionals, they will tell you it is usually helpful to fire 3 or 4 people in a different racial, gender, religious, age, sexual orientation category for every 1 person let go in any other “category,” as a defense against frivolous lawsuits. Regardless of performance. You come up with some reason to let go of the other people even if they are doing well & performing at high level. It is usually done as a “restructuring” & “elimination of the position” and then slightly change the job parameters to create a “new position” for replacement hires. So, for example, if Ms. George also let go a white Jewish man and 2 Asian atheist women at the same time, all of whom were US-born, it could be a legal defense against the Sall/Franco lawsuit.
It is unfortunate that this is the state of employment law in America now because there were true abuses and egregious examples before our civil rights laws tried to correct things. But of course lawyers get ahold of something and then begin to take advantage of it and twist the law well beyond its intent. And funny that John Franco is complaining about journalism and their sources when, based on the original Feb. 21st article that covered this, it appears Mr. Franco is the one who came to Seven Days to begin to prosecute the case in the media.
That said, it’s America and the guy get his day in court. We’ll see if the facts line up for Sall or State’s Attorney. The burden will rest on Sall to prove discrimination.
This Sall guy is a close-minded jerk who’s said many inappropriate things to his previous co-workers from a less prestigious area of employment. If your beliefs aren’t aligned with his Muslim beliefs (i.e. gender roles, clothing choices that show skin, lifestyle choices) he will state boldly how incorrect you are. He’s told women that folding towels is a woman’s job. Just jerk stuff like this.
My whole point is that there’s plenty of reasons to dislike somebody besides how they look. Also it sounds like he was a terrible assistant. Probably because he’s too prideful to admit he doesn’t know what he’s doing. This guy would definitely do that. It’s been almost three years I have no reason to lie about this. If you oppose him, you’re a racist or a bigot. If you happen to be a black Muslim, then you’ve been brainwashed by white people. Pointing the finger is easier than looking inward.
flymiami out.