Louisville mayor's office to change intern hiring practices after Courier Journal reports

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg’s administration is changing how it hires interns following Courier Journal reporting last year that Metro Hall interns from powerful families with close ties to Greenberg were hired through a program the mayor’s office said “prioritized” disadvantaged youth.

The Courier Journal learned of the changes after seeing them referenced in minutes from a KentuckianaWorks board meeting and then inquiring with the mayor's office.

A lawyer representing Greenberg against an ethics complaint launched in the wake of The Courier Journal’s reporting recently said three of the mayor’s office’s eight SummerWorks interns last summer were “pre-identified” for jobs.

Those interns did not necessarily submit an application, nor were the internships necessarily advertised.

Now, SummerWorks interns at the mayor’s office will instead be picked based on their resumes, according to documents provided to The Courier Journal by the mayor’s office.

“We will select SummerWorks interns from resumes provided by KentuckianaWorks through their application process. We will select other paid interns based on applications received through a job posting by the Mayor’s Office,” reads a form created for mayor’s office staff to request an intern position. Greenberg's director of communications, Scottie Ellis, provided the form to The Courier Journal.

In a November memorandum, Greenberg’s chief of staff David Kaplan said interns would be identified by an “Intern Committee” that will assign them to individual departments.

In a statement, Ellis said: “The Greenberg Administration was new to office as plans were put in place for SummerWorks during the summer of 2023. Now, the SummerWorks program and hiring of interns is better understood and has been outlined and communicated internally. Like last summer, every eligible applicant will have the opportunity to intern in an open position as we continue to see through our goal of providing young leaders in Louisville a great opportunity to give back to our community.”

Neither Ellis' statement, nor the memorandum, directly addressed The Courier Journal's reporting, which Greenberg called "inaccurate" in December.

However, minutes from a KentuckianaWorks board of directors meeting in November, the latest month for which minutes are posted, pinned the changes to the reporting.

According to the minutes, KentuckianaWorks executive director Michael Gritton "mentioned the article from a reporter who works for The Courier-Journal regarding a couple of SummerWorks participants who came from high-income families. The Mayor's office is making changes to the way they are going to hire interns next year."

KentuckianaWorks oversees the SummerWorks program, which provides job opportunities for Jefferson County youth between 16 and 21 every summer. While private companies that list jobs with SummerWorks pay youth out of pocket, “sponsored” interns like those hired by the mayor’s office and other governmental and nonprofit organizations are paid by SummerWorks. In 2023, Metro Government funding made up about two-thirds of SummerWorks's budget.

A 2023 press release from the mayor’s office said all Louisville youth between 16 and 21 could apply, but noted “youth applicants who face barriers and come from disadvantaged backgrounds are prioritized” in the SummerWorks job matching process.

While Ellis provided a statement and several clarifying remarks regarding several interns, the mayor’s office did not respond to a detailed list of questions sent by The Courier Journal, nor would they make a representative available for an interview about intern hiring practices.

An ethics complaint against Greenberg that was based on Courier Journal reporting on his wife's role in his administration and the intern hiring practices was dismissed earlier this month.

Regarding interns, the Ethics Commission said there was no evidence Greenberg himself directed the hiring of well-connected interns.

However, the opinion noted: “The Commission emphasizes that this ruling is not dispositive, one way or the other, of the question of whether the actions alleged in the complaint, if proven, may constitute a violation of the Ethics Code by persons who actually carried out the alleged acts.”

How many interns had ties to Greenberg?

On Aug. 10, The Courier Journal reported at least two SummerWorks interns hired by the Greenberg administration had ties to the mayor and whose families donated to his 2022 campaign: the granddaughter of Greenberg's former 21c Museum Hotels boss Steve Wilson and the daughter of Mariana Barzun, who heads the mayor's Office of Philanthropy.

Using public documents and files obtained under Kentucky's open records law, The Courier Journal has been able to verify the identities of two more interns connected to the mayor since then.

One is the son of Riggs Lewis, a Norton Healthcare executive who was tapped by Greenberg to be a volunteer "Strategic Economic Development Advisor" for Metro Government last summer. He is also the chair of the board for LOUMED, the city's 22-block medical and education district. He donated $500 to the Greenberg campaign and served on his transition team.

In an email to The Courier Journal, Lewis said his son “applied online to the SummerWorks program and was accepted to work exclusively at the MetroSafe office as an IT intern. He is an Information Communication Technology (ICT) major at the University of Kentucky.”

According to a list of SummerWorks interns obtained by The Courier Journal, he was assigned to “Mayor’s Office/MetroSafe.”

Another is an Ivy League college student who is the daughter of Paul and Annie McLaughlin, who donated a total of $8,000 to Greenberg's campaign. Paul McLaughlin is the president of Kelvin Cooperage, a Louisville bourbon barrel manufacturer. He did not return an email seeking comment.

According to the list of SummerWorks interns obtained through an open records request, the intern was assigned to "Mayor's Office/First Lady."

While Greenberg’s attorney said Barzun’s daughter was "pre-identified" and Wilson’s granddaughter was not, the mayor’s office would not tell The Courier Journal who the other two “pre-identified” interns were.

Speaking to WLKY in December, Greenberg denied any interns had gotten a leg up, saying “any allegations that certain people got preferential treatment or privileges, that is wholly without merit. It’s simply not true.”

Did the mayor's wife have an intern?

The mayor's office has yet to answer questions about whether the Greenberg's wife had a SummerWorks intern, despite documents from the program listing one assigned to her.

In September, the mayor’s office did not address a question from The Courier Journal about Barzun’s daughter listing her job as “Special Assistant to the First Lady” on LinkedIn.

But in a motion to dismiss the ethics complaint in December, Greenberg attorney Amy Cubbage would say Barzun’s daughter held no such position and made up the title out of “youthful zeal.”

In November, The Courier Journal obtained a list of eight mayor's office SummerWorks interns under Kentucky's open records law that showed the daughter of the McLaughlins was assigned to "Mayor's Office/First Lady."

The day The Courier Journal received the list, Greenberg spokesperson Kevin Trager pre-emptively emailed to deny she was a SummerWorks intern.

“A record provided today in response to an Open Records Request for SummerWorks interns in the Mayor’s Office was a preliminary document and does not accurately reflect the actual participants in the program,” Trager wrote. The intern “considered the program, but elected not to participate. Instead, she shadowed the Mayor and First Lady a handful of times this summer. She was unpaid in connection with her shadow experience.”

The mayor’s office now says Trager’s statement was not true.

According to Ellis, who took over as communications director in January, the woman in question “was an intern for two weeks in the Mayor’s Office through Summerworks” and “worked on several projects in collaboration with a number of team members.”

She added: “The information provided to The Courier Journal last year was incorrect.”

A SummerWorks timesheet for the intern — paperwork used to process payments for interns — showed she was working in late July, toward the end of the SummerWorks program.

The mayor’s office did not respond to questions about whether Rachel Greenberg was assigned an intern. KentuckianaWorks referred similar questions to the mayor’s office.

A SummerWorks “2023 End of Summer Report” posted on KentuckianaWorks’s website listed “Mayor’s Office (Mayor’s Wife)” as one of 50 employers of sponsored SummerWorks interns last year.

In pushing back against the ethics complaint, the mayor’s office has denied anyone at Metro Hall reported to Rachel Greenberg.

While the complaint was dismissed, the Ethics Commission urged Metro Council to clarify what role, if any, the mayor's wife should have in city government, saying "any policy maker or ordinary member of the public can plainly see the difficulties and conflicts which can arise in the workplace of Metro Government from deploying a manager's spouse as a volunteer, and which appear to have arisen in this case."

How were interns selected?

In defending the Greenberg administration’s intern hiring practices, Cubbage said it was “very common” for nonprofits and government departments hiring sponsored SummerWorks interns to “pre-identify” them as the mayor’s office had.

“There may not have been a written application, but they would have come and asked about the availability of the job. They would have come to the mayor’s office’s attention somehow. Just like any other nonprofit,” she said at an Ethics Commission meeting on April 2. “I think about just like my first job for a lawyer in my hometown, my parents called him up and said: ‘hey, can my daughter work for you?’ and that was the sum total of the application process.”

She added: “Everyone came to the mayor’s office asking to be interns. No one reached out to any donors’ children and said ‘hey, we want to reward you with this great internship in the mayor’s office.’”

The Greenberg administration has maintained three of its eight SummerWorks interns were pre-identified.

However, a Courier Journal open records request for SummerWorks job postings by the mayor’s office or departments under its umbrella turned up only one record: A post for a job with the Office of Immigrant Affairs, which hosted two interns.

Asked if he knew whether any other mayor’s office internships were advertised beyond the posting The Courier Journal obtained, Gritton, the KentuckianaWorks executive director, said: “As far as I know, that’s all. I mean, if we complied with an open records request, we gave you all that we had. And I’m sure the Mayor’s Office did, too.”

The mayor’s office did not respond to a question from The Courier Journal about whether additional jobs were posted.

Gritton said it’s “not uncommon” for nonprofits to “pre-identify” interns. He highlighted YouthBuild construction projects and TECH-Nique, a Louisville nonprofit aimed at boosting diversity in technology, as examples.

Alicia McClain, TECH-Nique’s founder, said the organization frequently encourages students to sign up without a formal application process. However, the program, which hosted 59 sponsored youth last year, is trying to serve underserved youth who otherwise might not have the opportunity to learn about technology.

“We’re definitely trying to get the least qualified candidates or those who have the least opportunity to be in this,” she said. “So we very much do recruit very hard for this.”

Another destination for SummerWorks sponsored interns — Louisville Science Pathways, a University of Louisville student organization that aims to expose students to science-related careers and research — described a competitive application process to The Courier Journal.

The program “does not ‘pre-identify’ interns because we want to open this opportunity to all students in our community, regardless of familial connections or societal status,” said its director, Katelyn Shenemen. “Our internships are always publicly advertised, and applications are required for program participation.”

Emails offer glimpse of hiring process

Emails obtained by The Courier Journal under Kentucky’s open records law show how quickly a job was arranged for one intern who was above the SummerWorks age limit, as well as the influence of the mayor's wife in Metro Hall.

On June 7, a woman named Virginia Lee emailed a mayor’s office staffer saying, “I am trying to help a college student apply for a job/internship in Metro and we ran into a couple hiccups on the KYiana Earns Website. Might you be able to help us? Rachel Greenberg asked us to get the application submitted today, so we’re trying to get everything in order.”

After it became clear that the prospective intern was 22, Pat Miller, Director of Operations and Constituent Relations for the mayor’s office, emailed saying, “Rachel is going to call you. We have another plan for [the intern]. SummerWorks will not work, you have to be 16-21.”

The next day, Rachel Greenberg emailed multiple mayor’s office personnel saying the intern “was approved by summer works to start 6/12.”

She added: “Hopefully she will choose to continue to live in our city after working with you and after graduation as is the hope of the wonderful summerworks program.”

Former Deputy Mayor Barbara Sexton Smith replied, writing "Rachel, this is great news. Thanks for leading us to this resolution and helping create a great opportunity for [the intern] now, and for our city once she graduates with hopes she chooses to live and work here."

Gritton adamantly denied any intern above the age limit has ever been hired through SummerWorks.

Ellis, Greenberg’s communications director, said the woman was not a SummerWorks intern, but was instead paid by the Office of Sustainability, where she was assigned.

The hiring of the intern came days after the head of that office, Sumedha Rao, emailed the director of SummerWorks, Chris Locke, expressing disappointment she was not able to meet the program’s deadline that year as she had received “a lot of requests for internships.”

Reach reporter Josh Wood at jwood@courier-journal.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @JWoodJourno.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville Mayor Greenberg's office changing intern hiring practices