A politically connected manager at the scandal-plagued Chicago Park District failed to report another employee’s sexual harassment allegation but faced only light discipline, according to documents obtained by WBEZ.
Maya Solis — a daughter of disgraced former Ald. Danny Solis — continues in her $126,072-a-year post as one of three region directors for the Park District, despite an internal investigation that found she learned about the sexual harassment allegation in 2018 and did not report it.
The Park District’s inspector general recommended earlier this year that administrators take “appropriate disciplinary action” against Solis. And the top HR official for the agency sent Solis a memo in April citing her “direct violation of the Chicago Park District’s sexual harassment policy.”
But the memo also shows Solis received only “verbal counseling” and an order to take three training sessions about harassment and “workplace conflict.”
Now, the female employee who says she was sexually harassed has filed a complaint against the park district with the city’s Commission on Human Relations. The employee alleges she told Solis about her problem “on numerous occasions” before she went to the inspector general’s office last year, and she complained that the Park District has not further disciplined Solis, according to documents obtained through an open-records request.
The Park District has urged the Human Relations Commission to dismiss the complaint.
The ongoing dispute marks the latest problem with sexual misconduct accusations at the Park District — where a scandal involving abuse of lifeguards at beaches and pools led to the resignations of top officials in 2021.
The Park District’s spokesperson declined to answer questions about Solis.
Last year, a woman who has worked for the Park District for nearly 30 years went to the inspector general’s office to allege that the head of an advisory council at a park on the South Side sexually harassed her in 2013 and then engaged in a yearslong “pattern of bullying.”
According to confidential I.G. documents obtained by WBEZ, the woman told an investigator that she was at an event at Fernwood Park, in the Roseland neighborhood, when she was introduced to the park advisory council’s president at the time, Kevin Jones.
The woman told an investigator with the I.G.’s office that Jones “stared at me up and down and gave me this unwanted look” before asking her, “Why you not in heels?”
The female employee said Jones approached her later at the same event and told her, “You’re ignoring me?” She alleged he asked her again why she did not wear heels and said to her, “You’re not going to answer my question?”
When the woman asked Jones why he kept talking about her shoes, she said he replied, “Because women are sexy in heels.”
Records show the woman who filed the complaint met in October 2018 with Jones, Solis and another Park District official, Kimberly du Buclet, who is now a Democratic state representative. That meeting, the woman said, was when she confronted Jones for the first time about his harassment of her five years earlier.
But the woman alleged that Solis and du Buclet spoke to Jones at the meeting only “about the importance of getting along” with Park District employees. Their reaction, the complainant said, left her “in disbelief.”
After the meeting, the woman said, she told Solis and the official that she would not agree to be around Jones and give him another “opportunity to sexually harass her again.”
Du Buclet said this week that she did not remember that meeting or the sexual harassment accusation.
After opening an investigation into the woman’s complaint, the I.G.’s office interviewed Solis, records show. In their report on the probe in March, investigators said Solis “believed the harassment had been addressed at the 2018 meeting because ‘the meeting concluded with the understanding of starting over and working together.’”
But the I.G. noted that the policy in effect at the time required supervisors to report allegations of sexual misconduct.
Solis, who manages the Park District’s south region, did not respond to messages.
Solis’s father retired from the City Council in 2019. Danny Solis has been charged with bribery but under his “deferred prosecution agreement” with the feds, he can avoid being convicted and going to prison.
Investigators wrote that Jones declined to respond to the harassment accusation and told the I.G.’s office he did not remember the 2018 meeting where the complainant said she confronted him initially.
The Park District sent Jones a letter on April 21 permanently banning him from the Fernwood Park advisory council and every other park advisory panel.
Jones declined to comment when reached last week by WBEZ. He has sued the park district, his accuser and two other officials in Cook County Circuit Court to overturn the ban.
Dan Mihalopoulos is an investigative reporter on WBEZ’s Government & Politics Team.
