Yesterday, we started posting the 2018-2019 Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury reports. They are easy to read and informative. Yesterday’s report was on housing the homeless.
The below report is their look at the ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act) compliance by the county of Humboldt:
This is the second report from the 2018-2019 Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury. The report examines Humboldt County’s compliance with a Consent Decree resulting from the Department of Justice’s litigation against the County for ADA violations, and is titled:
Here We Go Again
In 2008 Humboldt County entered into a settlement agreement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) which required the County to bring identified facilities, programs, and services into compliance with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) within three years. This settlement agreement resolved litigation filed by the DOJ claiming over fifty County facilities were noncompliant with the ADA.
The County failed to meet all the deadlines in the 2008 settlement agreement. In 2016, the DOJ again filed suit, alleging “[i]n the eleven years since the ADA violations were specifically identified to the County, including and following the three-year term of the settlement agreement, Humboldt County has failed to take remedial actions required for it to comply with the ADA.” Litigation ended when the County entered another settlement agreement, the Consent Decree, on September 7, 2016. The Consent Decree requires the County to remediate over 50 barriers for people with disabilities, including facilities and curb ramps. The DOJ’s press release stated that the US had entered over 220 settlement agreements with localities to ensure compliance with the ADA; of these, Humboldt County was “one of the rare public entities that did not take the remedial actions required by a PCA agreement to comply with the ADA.”
In light of the DOJ’s focus on Humboldt County’s non-compliance with the 2008 settlement agreement, the Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury elected to investigate the progress of the County’s efforts to meet the terms of the Consent Decree. As the County approaches the final deadline in the Consent Decree to remediate the remaining facilities and curb ramps, it seems unlikely that work will be completed on time. Many earlier deadlines have been missed and a number of projects are still out for bid.
July 15, 2019
Redheaded Blackbelt
By Oliver Cory
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