Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, in January 2023. Photo by Gage Skidmore | Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
An Arizona Senate committee hearing on allegations of discrimination within the Phoenix Fire Department was canceled today, after representatives of the department and the city refused to attend.
Before closing the hearing, the Republican chairman of the Senate Government Committee accused the city of caring more about diversity, equity and inclusion than public safety, ostensibly because non-white and female firefighters have been promoted to command positions.
Sen. Jake Hoffman, who is also the chairman of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, went on a tirade against the Phoenix Fire Department, the city and Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes for not attending the legislative inquisition. All had been invited on Dec. 3, but none had confirmed that they would attend.
“I’m obviously disappointed by this exercise in pathetic cowardice by the City of Phoenix and Kris Mayes,” Hoffman said Wednesday afternoon, before adjourning the hearing.
Both the city and Mayes told Hoffman in response to his invitation — via emails sent Dec. 10 and Dec. 11, and obtained by the Arizona Mirror — that they declined because they could not publicly discuss an ongoing investigation into the Phoenix Fire Department.
But Hoffman blamed Mayes’ absence on her inability to explain why she “buried” a civil rights complaint aimed at the department that didn’t align with what he called her “woke political ideologies.”
Richie Taylor, a spokesman for Mayes, told the Mirror that the large volume of complaints the office receives means it can take up to a year for them to be resolved
Hoffman said that the Phoenix Fire Department gives preference to women and minorities when determining promotions, and claimed that the civil rights complaint contained similar allegations.
“The public is put at risk by practices that refuse to prioritize the people who are most skilled and most qualified to lead our brave first responders,” he declared.
Hoffman added that he wouldn’t allow the fire department employees who claim they were discriminated against to share their stories on Wednesday without representatives of the city there to provide a response. He promised to reconvene the hearing after the city agrees to send representatives or the legislature compels them to attend.
He went on to allege that fire department employees were promoted based on “what they look like, who they sleep with and what their gender is.”
In recent years, Republicans in Arizona and across the country have come after DEI initiatives, which are meant to make people of different races, genders, backgrounds and abilities feel welcome in the workplace.
Proponents of DEI say that it helps companies and organizations more quickly innovate with a diversity of ideas and makes for better team building because of increased empathy.
Hoffman accused the City of Phoenix and its fire department of violating an Arizona law he sponsored in 2021 when he was a state representative, and which was signed into law by then-Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican. The law bans government entities in the state from requiring any employee to participate in training that “presents any form of blame or judgement on the basis of race, ethnicity or sex” and bars public funds from being used for DEI training.
Hoffman claimed that the city’s cultural competency programs, annual review demerits and step-raise consequences for not participating in courses about anti-racism, the LGBTQ community and gender pronouns violated that law.
If city representatives had attended the hearing, Hoffman said, “maybe, just maybe, we would have learned how that relates to being a firefighter, because I sure as hell can’t see a connection.”
On Wednesday, Hoffman accused both Mayes and the city of waiting until the last minute to respond to his invitation to the hearing, and said the city’s claim that it offered to send Fire Chief Mike Duran to explain the department’s promotion process, instead of the city and fire department human resources officials that Hoffman claims are responsible for the discrimination, was a lie.
“They offered no correspondence of any kind from the time we sent the initial invite until today at 11:30, when we received their declination,” Hoffman said.
Phoenix City Attorney Julie Kriegh wrote in a letter to Hoffman that the committee had declined the city’s offer for Duran to “testify and provide an overview of the promotion process within the Fire Department, clarify misunderstandings, and fully answer any of the Committee’s questions that do not relate to active investigations.”
The city provided the Mirror with a copy of the letter, but did not answer any additional questions about allegations against the city and the fire department.
“The City takes allegations of discrimination seriously and remains committed to addressing these matters through the appropriate channels,” Kriegh wrote in the letter.
According to correspondence obtained by the Mirror, the city responded to the invitation on Dec. 11, the same day as the hearing. But contrary to Hoffman’s claims that Mayes only responded a few hours before the hearing, she actually replied the day prior to the hearing, on the afternoon of Dec. 10.
Mayes explained in the letter that, according to Arizona law, civil rights complaints are to remain confidential until a lawsuit is filed — meaning it would be illegal for her to discuss the complaint in a public hearing.
She went on to say that the civil rights division of her office was under significant stress because of an increase in complaints, coupled with the legislature’s refusal to provide increased funding to handle those complaints.
Sen. Eva Diaz of Tolleson, one of the Democrats on the Government Committee, told the Mirror after the hearing was canceled that she had been looking forward to questioning the fire department employees who made the allegations of discrimination. She added that judgment should be reserved until members of the committee could hear from and question all of the involved parties.
“The City of Phoenix and Kris Mayes should care about the message that they’re sending to taxpayers,” Hoffman said. “‘Give us a hefty portion of everything that you make, every dime that you earn in a year, but when our work requires us showing up and being held accountable, we’re going to be missing in action.’”
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