Council Makes Move On Sexual Harassment Policy
After months of political machinations and public theater resulting from a sexual harassment complaint that was never really a formal complaint filed against Councilmember Warren Turner, the Charlotte City Council on Monday night unanimously adopted a code of ethics and harassment policy to govern the council and mayor.
The new policy, which includes guidelines on how the mayor and city manager should handle both formal and informal harassment complaints filed against councilmembers, also covers members appointed to council boards and commissions.
However, aside from formally establishing a harassment policy that applies to councilmembers – the old one only applied to city employees – the new policy sounds remarkably similar to the haphazard route the council followed when Turner was the target of an investigation triggered by an informal harassment complaint brought by a city employee. The biggest difference appears to be that the new policy doesn’t direct the mayor to send out incendiary e-mails warning all councilmembers to not sexually harass city staff when one them has been accused of such.
That’s what happened earlier this year, when Mayor Anthony Foxx blasted out an e-mail to all 11 councilmembers warning to not harass staff. The missive ignited a firestorm of controversy that ultimately led to the city hiring an attorney to investigate whether there was any validity to harassment complaints that had been filed against Turner. The investigation concluded that there was, but the council last month voted 6-3 to not censure Turner. Turner has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
The new policy limits penalties to censure of councilmembers who violate harassment rules, but does allow for the removal of appointed board or commission members. Councilmember Patrick Cannon, who had voted to not censure Turner, wanted the council to request the General Assembly for the authority to remove councilmembers who violated the new harassment policy. Cannon’s motion to pursue that authority failed.
Councilmember Michael Barnes joined the majority in opposing the motion, even though he voted last month to censure Turner.
“My sense is that if this body wasn’t willing to take the action that it could have taken on the most recent issue, that the General Assembly will not greet this with anything but a snicker,” Barnes said.
Foxx agreed. The mayor said, “If you find yourself in a situation where making even a censure vote is too hard, making a vote to remove a member of your body is even harder. And under what circumstances, short of a smoking gun, are you going to do that, or is a future board going to do that?”
The new policy leaves intact all definitions of harassment that exist in the current manager’s policy, which applies to city employees, so everybody is “protected against exactly the same kind of conduct,” according to Deputy City Attorney Bob Hagemann.
Under the new policy, anytime an employee comes forward with a complaint, the person receiving the complaint must immediately notify the city manager, who in turn must immediately notify the mayor, or if it’s against the mayor, notify the mayor pro tem.
Harassment complaints can be lodged either informally or formally by an employee, but it would be up to the mayor and manager to ultimately decide how the complaint should be treated. In deciding how to proceed, the mayor and manager should balance “the legitimate privacy and confidentiality issues for the employee with the right of the individual whose conduct is complained of to have knowledge of the complaint,” Hagemann said.
If the complaint is treated informally, the new policy authorizes the mayor and manager to meet with the councilmember whose conduct drew the complaint, to discuss the allegation and determine if the conduct can be changed or modified without formal action being taken.
For formal complaints, the policy requires the mayor and manager to either ask Human Resources to investigate or recommend hiring an outside investigator. In reaching that decision, Hagemann said, the mayor and manager should take into consideration the nature of the complaint and whether there has been a history of prior complaints, the city’s potential legal exposure, and the need to protect the privacy of the employee and the right of a councilmember being accused to be notified and treated fairly.
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