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For years, supporters of parents rights and opponents of race-based education materials have complained that the state’s Commission for Human Rights (HRC) is where their complaints go to die.

A new audit of the commission finds the state-run agency is a vast graveyard for civil rights complaints, with unresolved cases going back to the Reagan era.

The performance audit, performed by the Office of the Legislative Budget Assistant and due to be presented to the House Finance Committee on Friday, found the agency has unresolved cases of alleged discrimination going back to the Reagan administration.

The agency, until recently led by Ahni Malachi, has performed so poorly that it takes, on average, more than two years to resolve a single case.

Much of the problem rests on the agency’s management, according to the audit.

“We found the Commission did not perform necessary management control responsibilities such as developing a strategic plan; defining objectives; developing performance measures; identifying, analyzing, and responding to operational risks; and resolving prior audit findings. As a result, there was an increased risk the Commission would not achieve its objectives,” the audit states.

Interestingly, Malachi has found the time to also run the City of Concord’s Committee on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Justice, and Belonging (DEIJB), where she recently defended a $40,000 contract that went to a former get-rich-quick website operator.

Malachi, who served as the commission’s executive director since 2018 but was recently replaced by an acting executive director, was not available for comment.

Ahni Malachi

Created in 1965, the state’s Commission for Human Rights is tasked with enforcing the state’s anti-discrimination laws. People who believe they have been victims of racial discrimination, sexual harassment, workplace discrimination, or housing discrimination can take their complaints to this agency.

The commission is tasked with investigating and resolving those complaints in a reasonable amount of time. But that is not happening.

Currently, 237 unresolved cases are backlogged at the agency according to the audit, with some going back to 1984. It takes a year and a half on average before a complaint is even be assigned to an HRC investigator, the audit found, and close to another year before the case is resolved.

Compounding the issues within the agency is the fact that lengthy delays in resolving discrimination complaints often see the statute of limitations expire before a decision is made, meaning people are losing their right to take the complaint to court instead.

“Our review of 228 cases closed during State fiscal year 2023 found the Commission took an average of 840 days (2.3 years) to close a case. We found 62 of 228 cases (27.2 percent) reviewed were closed after the three-year statute of limitations that would have allowed complainants to have their cases heard in Superior Court,” the audit states. 

The 92-page audit includes damning anonymous statements from attorneys who deal with the agency.

“Over the last few years, the investigators in my cases never reached out or talked to my witnesses. In other words, cases were delayed for years and then decided without talking to witnesses,” one lawyer said.

“This agency should either be completely overhauled or eliminated. As constituted, it serves no purpose,” one lawyer said.

“Because the investigators are not experts in the law, they fail to ask for evidence from the employers that would be required,” another lawyer said.

“I’ve been told in several cases that none of the witnesses I listed were contacted,” another lawyer said.

Many problems found in the audit were present in a similar 2019 audit of the agency, soon after Malachi took office.

While the commission deals with complex legal issues, Malachi is not an attorney. She came to the commission after working as a public relations manager at WMUR.

Acting Executive Director Katrina Taylor, is also not an attorney but rather a former manager at a fireworks store. She declined to discuss the audit ahead of Friday’s House hearing.

The circumstances under which Malachi was replaced by Taylor remain murky, and nobody with the agency would answer questions about the staffing move. However, in a public letter to the City of Concord, Malachi said she suffered an uncommon but not rare type of heart attack known as a “spontaneous coronary artery dissection,” or SCAD.

The state Commission for Human Rights has not made any disclosures to the public about staffing changes. And staffing continues to be a problem, as the current leadership has failed to fill the agency’s vacancies. Of the 21 positions budgeted for at the commission, only nine were filled as of this month. Of those nine, six are investigators.

Despite having so few investigators on staff and a 237 case backlog, the commission’s leadership chose to divert its focus even more by assigning the investigators extra administrative tasks. Investigators were assigned to redesign the agency website, compile agency statistics, and peer review other investigators reports.

Investigators at HRC generally do not have legal backgrounds and are instead trained using outdated materials that reference laws and regulations no longer in effect, according to the audit. 

“The Commission does not provide its investigators with adequate training or tools. Training new investigators consisted primarily of using an outdated and deficient Investigator Manual,” the audit states.

Worse, the training manuals include real unredacted cases as examples for new investigators, meaning personal information that should be confidential, like the names, mailing addresses, email addresses, witness names, and phone numbers from actual complaints, are in the manuals.

That likely violation of state and federal privacy laws caught the commission’s leadership by surprise, according to the audit.

“Commission management appeared to be unaware of personal information in the manual, or misunderstood what should be considered confidential information,” the audit states.