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CAROL LOLLIS

The Hampshire County Courthouse in Northampton.

NORTHAMPTON - It's been nearly 30 years since Rafael A. Lopez-Sanchez of Amherst filed a federal lawsuit alleging he was overlooked for a job as a probation officer in Northampton District Court in favor of candidates with political connections and fewer qualifications.

And it was 20 years ago this week that Lopez-Sanchez and his attorney quietly settled that case against the Massachusetts Trial Court system, the late Alvertus J. Morse, then first justice of Northampton District Court, and Hatfield resident William H. Burke III, then chief probation officer of the court, according to a case file obtained from the National Archives.

The deal, which averted a scheduled trial, resulted in a $30,000 monetary settlement for Lopez-Sanchez. But his solitary fight against what he viewed as a discriminatory hiring system resonates today, as state and federal authorities investigate some of the same allegations in the embattled department.

For Lopez-Sanchez, the law enforcement probes are hardly surprising, even if they have prompted resignations of top brass, an indictment, as well as the arrest in December of the former acting chief probation officer of Hampshire Superior Court on obstruction of justice charges. More indictments are believed to be imminent as authorities wind down their probes.

"It was so obvious then," Lopez-Sanchez recalled of trying to get a job in the probation service in 1982.

Lopez-Sanchez was 48 at the time he applied to become a probation officer, and the requirements for the job were a minimum of a year's full-time experience in human or allied services and a bachelor's or graduate degree from an accredited college or university.

In a cover letter dated Sept. 28, 1982, to Morse, who handled hiring of probation employees in Northampton at the time, the multilingual Lopez-Sanchez elaborated on his lengthy resume.

He noted his work as a teacher in formal and non-formal education programs in Massachusetts and New Jersey prisons on behalf of veterans, Hispanics and inmates seeking rehabilitation programs. He had worked as an advocate for developmentally delayed persons who sought educational opportunities in the greater Holyoke area and with Vietnam veterans who needed help transitioning back into society.

He held a bachelor's degree in political science from Rutgers University, a master's degree in education from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and was a doctoral candidate at the time he sought the job.

"I went out of my way to apply for it because I thought I could contribute something," Lopez-Sanchez recalled in an interview with the Gazette.

There were two openings at the time, but Lopez-Sanchez was passed over for both. The jobs went instead to Thomas C. Foley, then 26, who is now the chief probation officer at the Northampton District Court and Kathleen M. Kelley, both of Northampton.

Lopez-Sanchez wasn't interviewed, but as a minority candidate, he should have been, according to the trial court's hiring policies. With help from the Legal Services Office at UMass, Lopez-Sanchez succeeded in having the job re-posted. He was eventually interviewed by Morse and Burke, both of whom played a role in the hiring, but was turned down a second time.

According to his civil lawsuit, filed by Springfield attorney Thomas C. Oppenheimer, Foley, who had worked as an intern under Burke and administrator in the Northwestern district attorney's office, as well as Kelley had far less experience than Lopez-Sanchez. He argued it was their connections in the court system and the DA's office that helped them land their jobs.

At the time, Foley's spouse had a clerical job in the district court office, which she resigned because of a state regulation prohibiting family members from working within the same court division. She is now assistant clerk magistrate at Hampshire Superior Court.

In 2004 Foley was promoted to chief probation officer in Northampton Distrct Court and today earns a $102,946 annual salary, according to the Probation Department.

Meantime, Lopez-Sanchez continues his lay advocacy work on behalf of veterans, particularly as a volunteer at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System in Leeds.

Case had merit

Oppenheimer, who no longer practices law, said he wouldn't have taken on the case if he didn't think it had merit. In his complaint and in naming names, he sought to establish a system of "myriad interrelationships between past and present employees" in the Northampton court system, the district attorney's office and state Legislature. The lawsuit also alleged that Lopez-Sanchez was discriminated against because of his race and ethnicity, as there was not a single black or Hispanic employee in the Northampton court division at the time. Further, he was not the only minority candidate who sought the job.

"I was very bitter because the legal establishment was looking the other way," Lopez-Sanchez said of his decision to file an employment discrimination lawsuit. "Tom did a terrific job of investigating."

"I really wanted others to help me with this," he added. "It was self-defense for a group that is maligned. We were going against a group in a closed system."

The state Trail Court defended the hirings and denied any wrongdoing on behalf of Morse, who died in 2011, and Burke, who retired as a deputy commissioner of the state probation system in 2009. The defense also argued that Lopez-Sanchez was not qualified for the job and that he failed to provide evidence to support his claims. After eight years, the case was settled in 1992, just days before a scheduled trial.

Full circle

Lopez-Sanchez's legal fight resurfaced in another guise last June when the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE) filed a federal lawsuit alleging corrupt and politically motivated promotion practices in the Probation Department.

The lawsuit names as defendants Robert Mulligan, chief justice for the Administration and Management of the Trial Court; Ronald Corbett Jr., acting probation commissioner; John J. O'Brien, the former probation commissioner who was indicted last year on corruption charges; and several of his former deputy commissioners, including Burke.

The labor association is seeking to vacate the promotions of Probation Department employees over the past eight years, in which political affiliation played a "substantial or motivating role" in those appointments. The organization represents approximately 1,100 probation service employees and seeks to have those positions re-opened for a fair and competitive hiring process.

The state Attorney General's office and U.S. District Attorney Carmen Ortiz have intervened in the case and requested a delay in proceedings until their investigations are completed.

"We have over 150 instances where people feel they were passed over for promotions for political purposes," said Richard L. Barry Jr., general counsel for NAGE. "There's probably a whole lot more than that."

In a separate case in Suffolk Superior Court, the National Association of Government Employees has filed a petition to vacate arbitration awards in about a dozen cases where they allege probation officials gave false testimony.

"We just want a fair process," Barry said.

The NAGE lawsuit in U.S. District Court was prompted after independent counsel Paul F. Ware Jr. issued a stinging 307-page report in November 2010, which the state's Supreme Judicial Court justices said detailed "systemic fraud and abuse" in the Probation Department's hiring and promotion practices.

New, old targets

Among those interviewed by Ware report was Burke, who admitted to participating in fraudulent hiring and promotion practices. Attempts to reach Burke for comment in recent weeks were unsuccessful. Those attempts included a phone message and a letter mailed to his home explaining the Gazette was preparing a story that would address his past work in the Probation Department.

In testimony, Burke told Ware that in preliminary screening rounds for probation employees, he advanced the names of favored candidates forwarded by the commissioner's office and was, like many others involved, "blunt in admitting that fixing the interviews meant that less qualified candidates were hired or promoted over more qualified candidates," Ware's report states.

In one exchange, Burke agreed that he advanced any favored candidate who was not "really, really - and I mean really - bad."

Ware's report was prompted by a Boston Globe investigative series and alleges patronage played a role in hiring and promotion within the department and that probation employees had a "pay for play" arrangement with elected officials, particularly state Rep. Thomas M. Petrolati, D-Ludlow, who represents Ludlow and parts of Chicopee, Springfield and Belchertown.

In a related development, the former acting chief probation officer of Hampshire Superior Court, Christopher Hoffman, 39, was arrested in December on obstruction of justice charges in connection with the ongoing probe. Hoffman is alleged to have told a subordinate that he would expose her to others as a "rat" if she cooperated with federal agents, according to a criminal complaint.

Hoffman was released on a $10,000 unsecured bond and is banned from having contact with Petrolati and members of the lawmaker's family, as well as with Burke and his family. He must also stay away from any current or former members of the Probation Department. State election records show Hoffman contributed $500 to Petrolati's political campaigns, donating $100 each year from 2006 to 2010. He was named acting probation chief in 2009.

"Obviously the Probation Department situation continues to be very troubling and we are in this wait-and-see to see what the highest levels of law enforcement have concluded," state Sen. Michael R. Knapik, R-Westfield, said this week. "The public's trust was betrayed by folks in the bureaucracy. It will be one more sad day of corruption in the commonwealth."

In the wake of Ware's report, Knapik had been named to a bipartisan working group that later recommended reforms in the Probation Department. He said he and other state lawmakers believe the new acting commissioner is implementing those new measures to establish fair hiring and promotion practices. A report on the department's progress is expected this year.

A state lawmaker of 21 years, Knapik described the Probation Department scandal as "disgraceful."

"People will pay dearly for trying to game the system," he said. "I simply ask, Was any of this worth it?"

As for Lopez-Sanchez, the heads rolling in the Probation Department in recent months are not, in his view, vindication of his own battle decades ago. Once his lawsuit was in the public domain, Lopez-Sanchez said he "couldn't buy a job," though he continued to work in a variety of positions on behalf of minorities and the disadvantaged.

"I wanted the system to do what it's supposed to do, simply that," Lopez-Sanchez said. "I find that the legal system has to answer to some of what has happened here. We have a really august body of legal people around here that should have seen this 20 years ago, 30 years ago. They should have known about the closed system."

Dan Crowley can be reached at dcrowley@gazettenet.com.