An OIG investigative report explains why Grand Canyon Superintendent Chris Lehnertz was exonerated of allegations/NPS

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Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Christine Lehnertz, who spent three months in administrative limbo after a series of accusations were made against her, was completely exonerated by an investigation by the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General. There was no immediate word on whether the individual or individuals who made the allegations faced any discipline.

Lehnertz, brought to Grand Canyon by former National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis in July 2016 to work on ridding the park of an atmosphere of sexual harassment, was abruptly removed and placed on an unspecified temporary assignment last October after undisclosed allegations were made against her. Last month she was officially cleared and returned to the park.

On Tuesday the OIG's office released its report into the allegations, which challenged the superintendent's proposed one-day suspension of a senior official, maintained that she had created a "hostile work environment and engaged in bullying and retaliatory behavior," and "wasted nearly $180,000" on renovations to a park residence used by a deputy superintendent.

The report concluded that the one-day suspension was justified and that there was "no evidence that Lehnertz created a hostile work environment or that she wasted nearly $180,000 in unnecessary renovations to a park residence."

The matter was just the latest to thrust the national park that turned 100 last week into a measure of uncomfortable national media attention.

Jarvis chose Lehnertz to succeed Dave Uberuaga, who retired rather than accept an assignment in Washington, D.C., after Grand Canyon was rocked by a long-running escapade of sexual harassment in the park's River District.

In January 2016, a report released by the OIG said that for roughly 15 years life deep in the Inner Gorge of the Grand Canyon at times reflected rowdy, sexually charged scenes from a frat party for some park employees, with male employees pawing and propositioning female workers, some of who at times exhibited their own risqué behavior.

That investigation generated a tawdry list of inappropriate behavior, from male employees taking photographs up under a female co-worker's dress and groping female workers to women dancing provocatively and bringing a drinking straw "shaped like a penis and testicles" to river parties. The incidents, a September 2014 letter to then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell charged, "demonstrated evidence of 'discrimination, retaliation, and a sexually hostile work environment.'”

While Lehnertz was brought in to help end harassment at Grand Canyon, another episode was reported in 2017, according to an OIG investigation into a park manager alleged to have harassed an intern. The incident, reported in January 2018, ran for several months in 2017, according to the OIG report. The manager, who was not identified by name or position, resigned from the National Park Service in October of that year, about a month after he was interviewed by the OIG's staff.

The manager's resignation came just three days before then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke released a survey that showed that nearly 40 percent of the National Park Service workforce has been the victim of sexual harassment, intimidation, or discrimination.

The investigation into Lehnertz' managerial style raised more questions of intimidation and discrimination, but in each the OIG investigators refuted the claims. 

The proposed one-day suspension of the unidentified senior park official revolved around his failure time and again to provide Superintendent Lehnertz with a requested appraisal on one of his subordinates, and failure to provide timely reports to her on a high-priority project as directed. Not only did he fail to produce the employee appraisal, the OIG report said, but he told a regional superior that he would not prepare the appraisal so the superintendent "can use it as a weapon" to terminate the employee.

As for the unspecified "high-priority" project, nearly a year after assigning this official with the task and without receiving any written progress reports from him as instructed the superintendent hired "an NPS regional director on a detail to the Grand Canyon" to handle the job. During his interview with the OIG investigators, the senior manager not only acknowledged that he didn't write the reports but it turned out that on the date he was to meet with Superintendent Lehnertz to discuss the project he said he was "confused" about how he missed the appointment.

The OIG team, in looking into charges that the superintendent was intimidating and hostile to her workforce, learned that "most" of 20 employees who reported directly to the superintendent found her to be "generally liked at the park and reported that Lehnertz "did not treat men or women differently and held everyone to the same standard." While five of the 20 said they "had encountered differences and conflict" with the superintendent at times, four of the five acknowledged that she "championed an 'inclusive and respectful' environment."

Superintendent Lehnertz did agree that her management style could seem harsh at times because she tended to ask detailed questions. 

"When I'm really getting into something," the superintendent told her management team at Grand Canyon, "I'm gonna ask more and more detailed questions. And that it's OK to say, 'I don't have that information, but I'll get it."

She also said she told her team she would work to "check" herself in such back-and-forth settings.

As to the "nearly $180,000" spent on renovating one of the homes used by one of the park's two deputy superintendents, not only did the OIG investigation find nothing wrong with the renovations or their cost, but noted that maintenance workers found "unexpected safety issues, such as out-of-code electrical wiring, an underrated circuit breaker box, no fire alarm system, structural issues, and a sagging roof and doorways" during the course of the renovations, which Lehnertz said were needed to help with recruiting a deputy.