Rachel Dolezal is the president of the Spokane NAACP. She also is a quarterly professor at Eastern Washington University. Questions have been raised about her race.
By Dana Ford
CNN
(CNN) — The mayor of Spokane, Washington, asked Rachel Dolezal to resign from a city commission on Wednesday after a report found that she, and others, acted inappropriately.
Dolezal is chair of the volunteer citizen Police Ombudsman Commission in Spokane, which is meant to provide independent citizen oversight of the Police Department.
Her name has dominated headlines this week amid accusations that she lied about her race. The misconduct found in the report is unrelated to that allegation.
In May, the city of Spokane hired a law firm to investigate a whistleblower complaint filed against Dolezal and two others, alleging workplace harassment and improper government action.
The investigation found that the three ombudsman commissioners acted inappropriately. Specifically, it found that they created a negative work environment, attempted to draft and adopt policies before a new ombudsman was seated, pushed for evaluations of staff before that ombudsman could be seated and instituted a policy of altering meeting minutes.
“We are deeply disturbed by the facts contained in the report of findings from the independent investigator,” Spokane Mayor David Condon and Council President Ben Stuckart said in a joint statement. “The conduct is unacceptable and falls far short of the community’s expectations of volunteers who sit on City boards and commissions.”
CNN’s Amanda Watts contributed to this report.
