Former Spokane HR director accused city leadership of racism and demanded a better payout. Now he wants $50 million

When former Spokane Human Resources Director David Moss learned in February that he was about to lose his job, he threatened to go public with accusations that would cause heads to roll in City Hall if he didn’t get a better deal on his way out.

The city returned with a $27,000 offer, but to Moss that was still insultingly inadequate – so inadequate compared to the severance package of a white executive, he argued, that it was further proof of what Moss, who is Black, claimed was racist treatment by the administration.

He reached out to city council members directly, claiming “corruption, discrimination and unfair treatment of Blacks is rampant” under Mayor Lisa Brown’s new administration. He agreed to an interview with The Spokesman-Review.

And then he stopped communicating. For seven months, no complaints or lawsuits were filed, and he stopped responding to the newspaper and at least one council member, Councilman Michael Cathcart, who had agreed to talk with him.

Moss suddenly reappeared on Sept. 24, personally sending city council members and the mayor’s office “formal notice” that he intended to sue the city, its employees and elected leaders, claiming racial discrimination and a hostile workplace. The cost to make the suit go away: $50 million. Though Moss wrote the letter, he told The Spokesman-Review that he had retained an attorney; he declined to disclose the name of his attorney.

Moss said he based this number off of research into case law in the states of Washington and New York, as he said he currently lives in the latter and could file in either state. For comparison, former Mayor Nadine Woodward filed a claim in July against the city alleging the City Council violated her rights and engaged in election interference; she offered to settle for $1.4 million, in part for lost wages.

Brown’s office declined to comment on personnel matters or on potential litigation. Moss’ termination letter indicates that Moss was being fired after the mayor had “lost confidence” in his ability to lead the department, claiming he had “failed to fulfill your duties” and “failed to be communicative and responsive to the Mayor and the rest of the Cabinet.”

Emails provided through a records request indicate at least one senior employee, interim City Administrator Garrett Jones, told Moss days before he was fired that Moss was communicating unprofessionally and failing to manage his department.

These and other records obtained by The Spokesman-Review provide further insight into the man who led the city’s human resources for more than a year and oversaw labor negotiations and critical investigations, including into the sexual misconduct allegations against former City Administrator Johnnie Perkins.

The records also show the lengths to which the city would and would not go to make complaints go away, even while denying wrongdoing.

Why Moss says he was fired

Moss told The Spokesman-Review in September that he believed he had been fired for a number of reasons, but primarily pointed to his attendance at an event on Feb. 20, a week before he was fired.

Moss was invited by City Council President Betsy Wilkerson to speak as a panelist at the City Council’s annual Black History Month event, where he claimed that “members of this event didn’t support the mayor …” When the mayor learned of his attendance, Moss alleged, “she was not happy” that he had attended the event.

Lisa Gardner, communications director for the city council who helped organize the event, does not recall any such comments. If any concerns had been raised, Gardner said, they likely would have been in regards to the prior administration, given that Brown had been in office less than seven weeks. Wilkerson also noted that she had spoken with Brown prior to the event and that the new mayor had raised no issues with Moss’ attendance.

He was not the only Black cabinet official in attendance; Jerrall Haynes, the city’s civil rights director Brown had elevated as a member of her cabinet as one of her first acts in office, was also a panelist. Haynes remains in that job .

Moss noted that he had read that Haynes had been “in the news, discredited,” for not paying his fines to the state Public Disclosure Commission, arguing that the disclosure of fines related to Haynes’ former campaigns for the Spokane School Board was further proof of the city attempting to undermine its Black leadership. The Spokesman-Review, which broke that story, learned of the unpaid fines from the commission, not the city.

Moss accused the administration of not promoting Black employees, pointing specifically to Black police officers Moss said had been passed over by the department for promotion. Wilkerson said she recalled Moss bringing up those concerns in 2023, before Brown took office.

Moss also said he angered administrators by criticizing the administration’s use of a Seattle-based firm Archbright to conduct Human Resources work, arguing those duties could have been performed in house and accusing Brown’s office of hiding payments to the outfit. Spokane city code requires council approval for any contract over $50,000; Moss alleged that Brown repeatedly contracted with Archbright for under that amount, avoiding council approval and scrutiny of the contracts.

Brown only contracted with Archbright once, for $27,000, before Moss was fired.

The city has contracted with Archbright to assist its Human Resources Department since at least 2017. Following Moss’ hiring at the beginning of 2023, the Woodward administration contracted with or amended its contracts with Archbright for human resources assistance six times, according to public records; of those, the City Council approved half of the contracts, including some that fell under the $50,000 threshold.

In 2023 and 2024, the city’s contracted with Archbright to assist the Human Resource Department to avoid conflicts of interest during misconduct disputes or because the city’s department was understaffed.

The council was aware of the city’s use of Archbright’s services, Wilkerson said. It was not surprising to her that those contracts continued after Moss was hired, she added, because he had no previous experience working for a municipal government.

“But since we had been through several (other directors), we needed someone in HR,” Wilkerson said.

From hiring to firing

Not including interim directors, Moss was the city’s fourth head of human resources hired in as many years by former Mayor Nadine Woodward, whose administration frequently dealt with turnover of key staff. Before Moss, the longest serving human resources director under Woodward lasted six months, and the department was without a permanent director more often than not during Woodward’s four years in office.

Woodward hired Moss in January 2023 from Smithfield Foods in Virginia, a business with 19,000 employees across 23 states where Moss had worked as the company’s senior director of human and labor relations.

Moss’ work was generally behind the scenes and attracted little attention.

His relationship with city unions was mixed. Joe Cavanaugh, president of Local 270 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said Moss was professional; Spokane Firefighters Union President Randy Marler said Moss seemed checked out and inattentive, and only briefly become responsive as Brown was taking office. Moss rebutted that he “wasn’t checked out, I was kept out,” arguing that the city had wanted Archbright to take the lead in union negotiations.

But records obtained by The Spokesman-Review show that staff in the Woodward administration had raised their own concerns about Moss, including that he hadn’t moved to Spokane after he had been hired. Instead, staff alleged he appeared to be traveling back and forth to the city from Georgia, which seemingly explained why he was unavailable for meetings two days out of the week, frequently didn’t communicate with his staff for extended periods and repeatedly canceled or no-showed at meetings he had scheduled.

When Brown took office in January, the transition was marked by seismic changes in top-level staff hired by her predecessor. Amid the tumult, the decision to remove Moss came and went with relatively little fanfare, aside from some rumors that the split had been contentious.

On Dec. 29, days before Brown took office and as she was naming some of the top-level staff she would be bringing on, she said that Moss would be staying on in his position. By Feb. 23, Moss was informed that was no longer the case.

By Feb. 26, Jones told Moss his access to the city network and his city email had been shut off amid his “ongoing threat to release confidential information.”

Within an hour, Moss responded, denying that he had ever threatened to release information but also saying the city could not stop him from airing his grievances publicly at a City Council meeting, accusing Jones of discrimination and being a “co-conspirator” against him. He also made it clear that he wanted a better termination agreement than he was offered.

“As always I beg the city to settle this matter and move!” Moss wrote. “Again, I’ve seen a white person get pension benefits for life even after leaving the city 50 million in debt.”

Moss was referring to former Chief Financial Officer Tonya Wallace, who Brown criticized on the campaign trail as underplaying the city’s financial distress and not doing enough to prepare the budget for when pandemic-era federal funding dried up in 2024. When Brown came into office, the city was facing a $50 million hole in the budget that needed to be filled by the end of the year.

Wallace had requested that she be allowed to stay on a few months longer so that her pension would be fully vested. Despite public concerns with Wallace’s job performance, Brown appears to have obliged.

A separation agreement sent to Wallace on Jan. 1 ended her employment as chief financial officer on Jan. 15, but allowed Wallace to technically remain a city employee until the end of May, just long enough for the pension benefits to vest. She was no longer working for the city, instead instructed to use her accrued leave and spend the remaining time on paid administrative leave; the city set aside $50,000 to pay for that administrative leave.

In emails, Moss made it clear he felt he had been shortchanged by comparison and threatened legal action.

“We believe we have made a fair offer,” wrote City Attorney Mike Piccolo in response, before proceeding to make Moss a better one.

Piccolo denied Moss’ claims of unfair treatment, saying that Wallace’s separation agreement was an exception. However, “the City is agreeable” to offer Moss an additional $27,000, to allow him to use his remaining accrued leave as Wallace had done, give him a “neutral reference” to future employers, and to allow him to collaborate on a news release about his termination, Piccolo added.

“With respect to the below, I respectfully decline!” Moss wrote in response, repeating his prior threat to go public and sue if the city didn’t provide an offer better matching what it offered Wallace.

“Also, based on my research the average settlement for employment discrimination cases are in the millions and I’m 1000% sure we will prevail!” he continued. “I beg the city to settle, so we can move on!”

The city acknowledged that Moss had declined the settlement agreement and reiterated that his last day of employment would be March 8.

“The city denies any allegations of discrimination toward you,” wrote Beth Kennar, an attorney with Summit Law Group contracted by the city. “Race played absolutely no factor… As you requested, I will not address performance issues here.”

Again, Moss threatened to file complaints, sue, “subpoena every employee of the city,” and release information “at my disposal” that he claimed would “have citizens of Spoken call for the resignation of several city employees,” misspelling the name of the city for which he worked. He claimed Jones would be one of the employees called to resign, if the city didn’t improve its settlement offer.

The city did not offer Moss better terms. That seemed to be the last anyone had heard from Moss until he threatened legal action last month.

In an interview, Moss said that he hadn’t gone public with his accusations in the moment because he had been hospitalized with COVID. After recovering, he said that he decided to have a “cooling off period,” and only in recent weeks filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He added that he had to try to settle with the city before the commission would pursue his complaint of discrimination against the city.

Moss had given the city until Thursday to pay him $50 million, after which point he has said he will file suit. As of Friday, city officials say that no further claim or lawsuit has been filed by Moss.