In the wake of sexual harassment charges leveled against a prominent city executive last month, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz assembled city department heads Monday morning to hand down harassment and discrimination policy changes for city employees.
The changes proposed at the meeting were designed to do away with problems in current policy by clarifying and offering modest expansion to existing administrative policies.
The policy changes come on the heels of a revision process undertaken by a staff team of representatives from Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunities Commission, Human Resources and the City Attorney's Office over the last two and a half years.
The release of these changes is only coincidentally linked to the sexual harassment complaints from Monica Everson, former receptionist of former Overture Center President Bob D'Angelo.
According to the memorandum distributed at the meeting, the process was initiated because of \shortcomings experienced in responding to complaints filed under the current policies and because of evolvement of the law in this field.""
Norman Davis, interim director of the Madison Affirmative Action Department, said that under the new proposal, AAD will coordinate all complaints. Under current policies, Affirmative Action had the option of co-investigating a complaint.
The changes collapse three separate Administrative Procedure Memorandums on anti-harassment, anti-discrimination and investigative procedures into a single APM and unifies the definition of protected classes. The definition of protected classes is expanded to include protections against harassing or discriminating against a person based on that person's HIV status.
Current policy provides for confidential investigations of alleged violations of harassment or discrimination policies. The proposed policy expands the due process rights of the accused by providing alleged violators with a notice of impending investigations and, in cases where it is safe to do so, a copy of the complaint.
The new policy recognizes the power of the public vote to respond to reports of violations against elected officials, requires that complainants and alleged violators be informed of the outcome of investigations, and recognizes the possibility that employees filing false of malicious allegations may face discipline from employers.
Assistant City Attorney Roger Allen said that enforcement would be carried out under existing avenues.
