Former Civil Rights Official to Lead Texaco Task Force

NEW YORK — Deval L. Patrick, former U.S. assistant attorney general for civil rights, will head a task force overseeing Texaco Inc.’s hiring and employment practices as part of the oil giant’s landmark racial-discrimination settlement with black employees.

The Equality and Fairness Task Force, which will evaluate and monitor Texaco’s human resources programs, will be created today when Patrick and the six other members are sworn in by the federal judge who approved November’s $115-million settlement.

The settlement, affecting 1,400 current and former Texaco employees, ended a controversy that exploded with the release of transcripts of a secretly tape-recorded meeting in which Texaco executives made racially inflammatory remarks and discussed the destruction of documents being sought by plaintiffs in the racial-discrimination suit.

Patrick resigned in November after three years as the nation’s top civil-rights enforcement officer.

Other members of the task force are:

* John J. Gibbons, retired chief judge of the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals and a constitutional law professor.

* Jeffalyn Johnson, president and chief executive of Integrated Quality Solutions, an Alexandria, Va., consulting firm that advises businesses on production and human-resources issues.

* Allen J. Krowe, Texaco vice chairman retiring from the board on Monday.

* Mari J. Matsuda, law professor at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.

* Luis G. Nogales, president of Nogales Partners, a Los Angeles-based media-acquisition firm.

* Thomas S. Williamson Jr., an employment-law specialist and partner in the Washington, D.C., law firm of Covington & Burling.