EEOC chair Cari M. Dominguez stepped down from her post on August 31, when her five-year term ended, replaced by Naomi Earp, the vice chair.
Dominguez implemented a repositioning plan of the agency’s field structure last January that thinned management ranks and increased frontline staff, expanding the agency’s presence in Mobile, Alabama, and Las Vegas, but reducing it elsewhere.
The agency has had to operate within a limited budget, funded once again this year at $327 million but only after Sens. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Richard Shelby, R-Ala. rejected an administration request to cut funding.
Dominquez is credited with helping to secure an additional $18 million in an emergency war-supplemental spending bill in fiscal 2003, which helped to avoid an agency-wide furlough of almost three weeks.
According to the EEOC, Hispanic Business Magazine listed Dominquez as one of the 100 most influential Hispanics in the country and the American Biographical Institute listed her as one of the two thousand most notable American women.
Under her tenure, EEOC received its first independent audit in 2003, and an unqualified opinion from independent auditors in 2004 and 2005.
Unions wrestled with her over changes at the agency however. The American Federation of Government Employees said they’re cautiously optimistic of Dominquez’s decision to return to the private sector, and Gabrielle Martin, president of the AFGE National Council of EEOC Locals No. 216, said of her records that it was “mixed, at best.”
The union said it hoped the change in leadership would help resolve staffing and funding issues that despite improvements in case processing contribute to a backlog of cases that will likely grow to 48,000 by fiscal 2007 and make it difficult speed up the average time it takes to process an EEO complaint — 411 days in fiscal 2005.
“Perhaps this change will be the catalyst needed to resolve the EEOC’s ongoing staffing and funding crisis,” Martin said.
