Outside firm investigating at Cleveland Hopkins for $400 per hour

CLEVELAND (WJW) — The FOX 8 I-Team has found an outside law firm was hired to do an investigation at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport , and that firm was paid $400 per hour.

The investigation involves looking into working conditions and employee complaints.

But with taxpayers footing the bill, we did some digging.

If you fly out of Hopkins airport, there’s a good chance you won’t hear complaints from workers or complaints about working conditions and management.

Yet, Cleveland City Hall heard enough to hire an outside law firm to look into that.

The city said Ogletree Deakins will get paid $400 per hour.

Bill Bass, former human resources administrator at the airport, said, “They knew they had to do something.”

Last year, Bass resigned.

“What I saw was a lot of turnover, a lot of management dysfunction and unhappy employees. Morale was terrible,” he added.

In fact, last year the I-Team obtained internal emails sent from airport workers to Cleveland City Hall.

“I am scared. If we had an airline crash, we would not be prepared,” one person wrote.

Another wrote of a “toxic environment.” Others wrote of “discrimination,” “retaliation” and more.

Since then, we’ve learned some workers have filed formal complaints against specific top managers.

The administration also has been accused of violating the city charter in promotions and appointments.

We went to the Cleveland law director and asked, “Why do we need an outside firm to look into this? Why can’t the airport do this on its own?”

Law Director Mark Griffin said, “You know what? I think it can, but I think it’s good to have a fresh set of eyes.”

The city’s highest-paid employee runs the airport. Still, the city will pay an outside firm at that rate of $400 per hour.

The law director pointed out the outside firm specializes in labor issues, and that the firm is not charging the city its full, hourly rate.

“Still expensive, but we think the price of not doing the right thing is even more costly to the city,” Griffin said.

“Very simply, discrimination is expensive and something that we can’t stand for. So, regardless of the price, we want to make sure we get a fair evaluation.”

Bass isn’t sold on hiring someone from outside to study labor complaints at the airport.

“I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s a lot of faith in those types of studies,” he said.

The city said this could lead to changes, making the airport workplace better — a place you depend on to be a smooth operation.

It’s not clear how long the outside investigation will take.

When it’s over, we’ll report the findings and add up the bill.

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