With allegations of sexual harassment raised in two city departments, Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer said yesterday that all city managers will be required to receive "sensitivity training" next week.

Moyer made the announcement as employees in the Fire and Public Works departments have lodged complaints. Moyer said she also has asked her staff to review and clarify the process for dismissing employees.

"It is an issue that we need to deal with," Moyer said. "And I think I am dealing with it."

City Human Resources Director Kimla T. Milburn said next week's "leadership skills" training for managers will be held at Anne Arundel Community College and will build upon training all city employees received last fall on sexual harassment issues and equal employment laws.

The mayor said city officials are looking into comments allegedly made by a Public Works supervisor but declined to comment further, saying that she is forbidden by law to discuss specific personnel issues.

Russell T. Morgan, chief of the Bureau of Inspections and Permits, said he has been on paid leave from the Public Works Department for a month.

When contacted this week, Morgan, who has worked for the city for more than 13 years, would not discuss the allegations that prompted his being put on leave.

He did say, however that he and his attorney would meet with city Public Works Director David L. Smith this week to discuss "various items that we feel are unfounded."

The city recently wrapped up an investigation into a female firefighter's harassment allegations, Moyer said.

Deborah Imhof, who in 1998 became the first woman in the department promoted to the rank of firefighter first class, filed an internal complaint with the city in December 2000 about inappropriate comments made by fellow firefighters, according to her attorney, Diane Seltzer.

Based on that complaint, the city launched an independent investigation, Moyer said, and the department took disciplinary action against two employees.

One of them, Lt. Clarence E. Johnson, Imhof's supervisor at the Eastport Fire Hall, successfully appealed the city's April decision to suspend him for one day.

At the meeting of the Civil Service Board last week, Imhof testified about comments purportedly made by Johnson in the fall of 2000 at the Eastport fire hall.

Johnson, who is the department's only African-American officer, was said to have referred to a middle-age white woman on television as "shriveled-up old rice pudding."

Imhof, who is white, said that the comment struck her as racist.

The Civil Service Board voted unanimously Friday to lift Johnson's suspension.

Board Chairman James R. Renfroe said the board made its decision based on the length of time between the incident and the disciplinary action.

"Suspending him in April for something he did a year and a half ago was a little long," Renfroe said.

Johnson could not be reached for comment this week.

Moyer gave no specifics of disciplinary action taken against the second firefighter or the results of the city investigation.

Seltzer, Imhof's attorney, said that her client's allegations go beyond Johnson.

In February, Imhof filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission "based on various episodes of gender discrimination and gender harassment in the Fire Department," Seltzer said.

Seltzer said that Imhof had been passed over for training opportunities during the paramedics' rotation allowing "more junior, lower ranking male employees ... to basically trump her."

Imhof, who declined to comment, has been on stress leave from the Fire Department for the past month, Seltzer said.

The attorney added that her client has gotten "the cold shoulder" from co-workers since she filed her complaints.

"The environment in which she was working and the lack of change after bringing her concerns to management got to be more than she could handle on a daily basis," Seltzer said.

Moyer said she was not aware of Imhof's other complaints regarding training and promotions or of the EEOC complaint, but that she thinks the Fire Department has "a long way to go" on sensitivity issues.

Fire Chief Edward P. Sherlock Jr. said he could not comment directly on Imhof's complaints or the department investigation. But he denied that women in the department are discriminated against.

"I don't believe it is a widespread problem," said Sherlock, who noted that the complaints of harassment and discrimination stemmed from only one of the six women who are among the department's 99 firefighters.

"We have a lot of female employees who are happy," he said.