| -Caveat Lector-
Sounds like Charles and Sandy Moose are bush league Jesse Jacksons in the
extortion game.
washingtonpost.com
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Panel Delays Moose's Pay By Matthew Mosk and Dana Hedgpeth Montgomery County is withholding former police chief Charles A. Moose's final
paycheck while the county Ethics Commission seeks more details about a legal
settlement he listed as income on his 2003 financial disclosure form, county
officials said. Moose is asking to keep confidential the source and amount of the money he
and his wife received prior to his resignation June 28. The payment was
mentioned on forms made public by the commission last week. The forms do not disclose who made the payment. But Moose sought a financial
settlement this year from Marriott International Inc., according to sources
familiar with that request. The Bethesda-based hotel chain is one of the largest
corporations doing business in Montgomery County. Chief Moose sought the settlement after alleging that he was a victim of
racial discrimination in December while staying at a Hawaiian resort managed by
the chain, according to one of the sources, who was briefed on the incident at
the heart of the allegations. The source did not know how much Marriott
ultimately paid but said the Mooses requested the company give them $200,000 to
avoid a lawsuit. Moose and his wife have repeatedly declined to comment for this story.
Washington civil rights attorney John Relman, who handled the matter for the
Mooses, hung up the phone when asked about the case. Marriott officials released
this statement: "He did stay with us in Hawaii. An issue arose inadvertently
during his stay. We resolved it." "Beyond that," said company spokesman Tom Marder, "there isn't more that we
can discuss." The Ethics Commission collects financial disclosure reports from top-level
county employees and elected officials every year. As part of his 2003 report,
Moose filed a form in which he invoked a provision in the county's ethics law
that allows the details of such a settlement to remain confidential, so long as
the employee assures the commission that his county department was not
regulating or doing business with the party that paid him. The payment, and Moose's assertion that it can stay secret, presents a
dilemma for the Montgomery County Ethics Commission, which has already tangled
with the famous former chief over his plans to write a book about the Washington
area sniper case. County officials said that because Moose supplied so little
information about the settlement, the commission has no way of determining
whether he can legitimately keep it from public view. The commission asked county officials to withhold Moose's final paycheck
while a county attorney seeks more information from Relman. According to Marc P.
Hansen, chief of the county's division of general counsel, the two lawyers "have
been playing phone tag" for at least a week. County Council member Phil Andrews (D-Gaithersburg) said he believes that the
commission should be told more. "At the very least," Andrews said, "I would want the Ethics Commission to be
able to determine whether it's appropriate that it stay confidential." The dispute that led to the Mooses' financial settlement originated at the JW
Marriott Ihilani resort and spa at Ko'Olina, a luxurious, grassy beachfront
property with manmade lagoons and a golf course about 30 miles outside downtown
Honolulu. Late in December, still exhausted from the three-week sniper manhunt
and the accompanying media blitz, the chief flew with his wife to the Hawaiian
hotel to celebrate their 14th wedding anniversary and finally get some rest. At some point during the Mooses' stay, sources familiar with the allegations
said, the chief wandered into what the hotel managers call "the back of the
house," an unfinished area reserved for employees . Moose was confronted
by a hotel employee. When the chief was asked to produce proof he was a guest at
the hotel, in the form of a room key, an argument ensued, the sources said. The details of the exchange have not been publicly disclosed. At some point
after this exchange, Moose contacted Relman. The Washington civil rights lawyer,
who is best known for his representation of African American plaintiffs suing
the Denny's restaurant chain, was also a very familiar name to Marriott's
attorneys, the sources said. In 1999, Relman helped represent the NAACP in a
lawsuit against the Adam's Mark hotel chain after Black College Reunion
participants complained of discrimination at a hotel in Daytona Beach, Fla. Two
years later, Relman and NAACP attorneys settled the case for $2 million. In a letter to a top-level Marriott executive, the source said, the Mooses
threatened to sue over what they considered discriminatory behavior at the
Hawaii resort. In the letter, Moose asked for $100,000 for himself and $100,000
for his wife, to compensate them for "suffering" and "distress," the source
said. The request infuriated top executives at Marriott, according to company
executives who discussed internal reaction to the settlement demand with The
Washington Post on the condition they not be named. They said company lawyers
believed the hotel chain's only option was to settle the case. The last thing
the company wanted was the public relations debacle that probably would come
with an accusation of discrimination from Moose, who was riding a wave of
popularity as one of the nation's best-known African American lawmen, they
said. Though the deal was sealed with a confidentiality agreement, it has not
stayed entirely secret. Unsubstantiated accounts of a deal between Moose and
Marriott surfaced this spring on the Web site of the Montgomery County police
union. The union site still includes a link to a June 18 article posted in an
Internet publication called WorldNetDaily.com, which reported that Marriott
"won't deny persistent rumors" that the company paid Moose "big bucks" to drop a
charge of racial bias against the hotel chain. But there is no detail about the source or amount of the settlement in
Moose's ethics filing. Those documents say only that he engaged in "a settlement
[with a] confidentiality clause." Records show that such a filing by an employee
is unusual but not unheard-of in Montgomery County. In fact, Moose made a
similar declaration in his 2000 disclosure form. In that statement, he reported
that he and his wife were the recipients of confidential settlements in an
amount that exceeded $5,000 each, but no further information was disclosed. Prior to their arrival in Maryland in 1999, the Mooses had raised
discrimination allegations in other instances, and they sought compensation in
at least one case. According to city officials in Portland, Ore., where Moose was police chief
and his wife, Sandy Herman Moose, was a staff member for the police department's
citizens complaint review board, the couple also benefited from a confidential
legal settlement. Before she left her job with the city, Sandy Moose received a settlement with
the city that resulted from a sexual harassment allegation she made against
another employee. Barbara Clark, a former Portland city auditor, served as Sandy
Moose's boss. "My recollection is that the city settlement was about $10,000 on
the sexual harassment case," she said. "I remember because it came out of my
budget." The settlement was intended to be confidential, Clark said, but it was
mentioned in a 1991 profile of Moose by the Portland Oregonian. That news
account also reported on an incident in which the Mooses said they were victims
of discrimination because they are an interracial couple and had considered
taking legal action. In that instance, the Mooses were on a visit to Jackson, Miss., where he was
a candidate for police chief. While in Jackson, they attended a party for
community leaders. The Mooses told the Oregonian that they were "shown into a
separate room, where they stood alone, ignored. The two other black finalists
[for the job], whose wives were black, got the attention. Moose didn't get the
job." According to the newspaper, Sandy Moose protested their treatment to the
Southern Poverty Law Center. According to a spokesman for the law center, no
discrimination case was ever filed, and no settlement was ever paid. Special correspondent Rita Beamish in Hawaii and news researchers Meg
Smith, Julie Tate and Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.
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