Former North Las Vegas city manager files 3rd suit against city

The former city manager of North Las Vegas is suing the city for the third time, arguing she was wrongfully terminated despite ongoing ethics investigations about her conduct.

Qiong Liu was fired in February 2018 after the city council claimed she forged documents to give herself a retroactive raise.

According to the lawsuit, Liu tried to explain to the city council that she thought she was fixing an accounting error.

The complaint filed Thursday states that Liu was given a pay increase in 2016 that she felt was retroactive to 2015, and she sent a memo to Cass Palmer in the city’s human resources department asking to have the $30,000 raise paid retroactively.

Liu claimed that North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee told her to file the memo instead of bringing the retroactive pay proposal in front of the city council.

“Mayor Lee told Dr. Liu not to discuss her request and instructed her to work with Mr. Palmer to resolve the issue,” attorneys wrote in the complaint. “Mayor Lee did not tell Dr. Liu that she was not entitled to a retroactive pay increase or that Human Resources (“HR”) could not approve such a request without approval from the City Council.”

Liu is being represented by attorneys Andrea Champion, Nicole Lovelock, Sue Cavaco and Marta Kurshumova.

‘Glowing performance reviews’

The attorneys argued that despite Liu’s “glowing performance reviews,” Lee wanted his longtime associate and former political adviser Ryann Juden to take over Liu’s job.

“Dr. Liu was recognized as an exemplary employee of the City of North Las Vegas and served as a civil servant for the people of North Las Vegas for thirteen years,” Champion wrote in a statement to the Review-Journal Friday. “She was wrongfully terminated, in violation of the terms of her Employment Agreement, in November 2018. Since then, the City of North Las Vegas has not acted in good faith to resolve her claims.”

Liu and the city initially agreed to an arbitration process. Then Liu filed a lawsuit in January 2020 against Lee and Juden, arguing they conspired to oust her.

In April 2020 she filed a second suit against the city that echoed the statements made in the first. The April complaint also laid out seven accusations the city made in a complaint against Liu filed with the state ethics commission.

The January case remains open and is scheduled for jury trial in September. The April case was closed in June when the court ruled Liu should receive $44,622 from the city.

Ongoing ethics investigation

Meanwhile, an investigation by the state ethics commission is ongoing. North Las Vegas spokesperson Delen Goldberg said Saturday that several city employees have been interviewed in connection with the ethics investigation and evidence was retrieved from city hall.

An internal investigation completed by the Las Vegas law firm of Fisher Phillips found Liu had prepared an internal memo seeking the pay raise on Jan. 4, 2018, one day after the North Las Vegas City Council delayed for two weeks a discussion about her performance.

Liu’s assistant forwarded the memo to the city’s human resources department, believing it was already delivered to the City Council, according to the report, which was released by the city Friday. The memo was never delivered, and the report found that Liu had time to send it “if she wanted to.”

ess than a month before she was terminated, on Jan. 9, 2018, she asked an employee to “limit access to her emails,” which she told the investigator was in response to the ongoing investigation and she feared Juden “poking around.”

FBI agent Reid Nakamura met with North Las Vegas officials at City Hall on Jan. 30, 2018 and again on Feb. 6, 2018, the day before Liu’s termination, according to visitor sign-on logs obtained by the Review-Journal at the time. Goldberg confirmed that those meetings were related to Liu.

“Both parties agreed to arbitration for contract disputes,” Goldberg said Saturday. “It’s unfortunate that Dr. Liu has chosen once against to waste taxpayer dollars with a dishonest and meritless lawsuit. A third party outside investigation found cause and as her own lawyer disclosed, the Nevada ethics commission found cause and is investigating Dr. Liu for seven violations of state law. We are extremely confident in counsel’s decision to terminate Dr. Liu for cause.”

Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.