Maggie Franklin was the only African American employee at the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency during her six years as its first and last public information officer.

Franklin started Oct. 30, 2000, and then endured a hostile, racially charged, retaliatory and discriminatory environment, she claimed in a civil rights lawsuit.

On Nov. 2, 2006, she gave a copy of her U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint to SAFCA Executive Director Stein Buer. Six days later he fired her.

In court papers, the agency says she was fired because of substandard written work, low productivity and poor responsiveness to Buer's directives, including insubordination at times.

Earlier this month, the SAFCA board approved a payment to Franklin of $450,000 to settle the suit. According to a written agreement, the agency continues to deny her charges, but the parties settled "to avoid the substantial expense and inconvenience of further litigation."

Neither Franklin nor the agency would comment. The Bee obtained the agreement through a California Public Records Act request.

SAFCA, a joint powers agency created by the city and county of Sacramento, along with other public entities, partners with state and federal agencies to implement flood control measures. While Franklin worked for SAFCA, she was paid by the city.

U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb rejected Franklin's discrimination claim in relation to her termination and her claim of a hostile work environment.

But the judge found that Franklin had enough evidence to go to trial on her claim of an unequal timekeeping policy that reduced her earnings, and that this policy and her termination were acts of retaliation for her repeated racial discrimination complaints.

"Furthermore," Shubb wrote in his March order, "the evidence would support an inference that SAFCA and the city did not take all reasonable steps to prevent discrimination, as they never implemented the cultural diversity classes ordered in the mediation following (Franklin's) first claim of discrimination."

The agency paid to move Franklin, now 61, and her husband to Sacramento from Toledo, Ohio, and started her at $4,971 a month. She was promised raises after six months and a year of satisfactory performance, documents say. She was to be reviewed for yearly increases.

She received one raise in six years and she had to go to mediation to get that, she said in a court declaration.

Shortly after her arrival and complaint to then-Executive Director Francis "Butch" Hodgkins about pervasive use of swear words, she was confronted by agency administrator Julie Lienert, who came shouting into Franklin's office, went around the desk and put her finger in Franklin's face, court papers say.

Lienert put the word out and Franklin became "for all practical purposes, the office pariah," court papers claim.

She overheard fellow workers refer to her with profanities and racial slurs, the papers say. One witness testified in a deposition that Lienert referred to Franklin as a "lazy (racial epithet)."

Hodgkins reportedly told Franklin that SAFCA managers were "a special group" and she "did not fit in."

"I was advised that I needed to do more 'menial tasks,' and that managers believed that I acted as if I were better than they were, and 'in some cases even uppity,' " Franklin said in her declaration.

She took Hodgkins' remarks "as code that she was considered an 'uppity (racial epithet),' and that appropriate tasks for her were menial and subservient, and that she did not fit into the office because of her race," court papers say.

Franklin filed a claim of racial discrimination with the city's equal opportunity office. After an investigation and mediation, SAFCA agreed to a retroactive salary increase and to undertake cultural diversity training for its employees.

"The segregating behavior did not stop," Franklin said in her declaration. Then some of her tasks were assigned to an outside consultant.

In July 2004, Buer took over as executive director, but Hodgkins was retained as a consultant "and remained a part of the office politic and culture," Franklin said in her declaration.

She said she told Buer of the "persistent problems" she was experiencing and requested that the cultural diversity training be scheduled.

He said it was not his responsibility and "he could not work with anyone who filed a claim of racial discrimination against him," Franklin said.

"I said that sounded like retaliation," she recalled.

"It's not retaliation, it is a fact," she said he replied.

In the spring of 2005, "I considered the totality of my experience at SAFCA and I concluded that race was a factor," she said. Buer told her she ought to make a formal charge, Franklin recalled.

In the summer of 2006, Franklin received a negative performance evaluation from Buer, who said her strategic planning skills needed improvement. She was denied permission to attend conferences directly related to public relations planning and messaging, a violation of her employment agreement. She again told Buer his acts were discriminatory.

Buer then asked the city's equal opportunity office to investigate, telling its manager, "Either I am a racist and should be fired or resign, or Ms. Franklin is incompetent and should be fired," according to court filings.

Just before he fired her, Buer learned the investigation had cleared him, according to court filings.

Call The Bee's Denny Walsh, (916) 321-1189.