By Dan Horn
Enquirer staff writer

A former city of Cincinnati investigator accused city employees Friday of shredding her files in an effort to obstruct her investigation of a West End housing program.

Kimberlee Gray, a former investigator with the Office of Municipal Investigations, leveled the charges in a revised version of a lawsuit she originally filed against the city last year.

Gray claims city officials, including former City Manager John Shirey, demoted her from acting director of OMI because she was investigating ties between city employees and the Genesis Redevelopment Corp.

Genesis was the target of an investigation because it received $700,000 in tax money but did not complete any significant development projects in the West End.

The integrity of the investigation became an issue in 2001 when Gray and another OMI investigator told City Council members that some city employees had obstructed their work.

In her revised lawsuit, Gray now claims that some city employees went even further in 2002, destroying almost the entire file she and the other investigator had created on the Genesis case.

Gray said she witnessed the shredding but never was able to determine who ordered it.

But she said the destruction apparently occurred without proper authorization, such as a "certificate of disposal" approving the shredding.

"The majority of the documents in the file were destroyed and no other copies exist," Gray states in her lawsuit.

City Solicitor J. Rita McNeil declined comment on the revised lawsuit but said the city continues to deny Gray's charges.

"We don't believe those allegations are true," she said. "We'll wait for her proof."

But Gray's lawyer, Elizabeth Loring, said the destruction of documents complicates her client's efforts to prove city officials retaliated against her because of her investigation.

"She was investigating possible wrongdoing in the approval of funding for Genesis," Loring said. "Pretty much everything proving what she was doing is gone."

E-mail dhorn@enquirer.com