Why an Independent Appeal Process to the BCC Makes Sense Part I: What Happened in 2018?

There are compelling reasons to consider enacting a stand-alone, independent process for employee appeal of a workplace harassment decision directly to the Board of County Commissioners

Yesterday morning during the BCC's agenda review--I made the case for the BCC's development of an independent appeal process for employees to utilize if such employees failed to get appropriate resolution to their harassment complaint (s) through our current, existing process.

I brought this for a couple of reasons:

In the spring of 2018, the BCC settled a messy, ugly harassment complaint in Public Safety.  At that point, we enacted a strict and very prescriptive anti-harassment policy with an admonition to staff that it be followed with fidelity to hopefully prevent further issues or at a minimum to allow for the swift action on future complaints.

I did not know it at that time  (I found out subsequently)---but just three short months later, in June/July of 2018----- a series of scathing harassment complaints were filed in the public safety office.  With a brand-spanking new anti-harassment policy on the books from just three months earlier put in place by the BCC---this should have been a great test of the new policy, right?

But it wasn't--it instead turned into the rocket exploding on the launchpad......Something deeply disturbing happened to these  complaints:  They were not followed up on and worked as dictated by the policy. Our policy was not followed, and eventually, these complaints were just swept under the rug.

Within a few short months of these complaints being buried-----something even more sinister and disturbing occurred.  Several of the employees that filed these complaints had very serious allegations leveled against them by an employee of public safety. Ironically (or not, depending upon one's perspective) the supervisor that filed the new, very serious and very onerous state-level complaint against these same employees---was the very supervisor that the initial complaints named as the harasser!  Imagine that,  right??

Subsequent to all that drama--several employees of that department resigned under duress, many quit, and several supervisors left as well.  The Public safety director resigned, as did the HR director and eventually the County Administrator.

To the best of my knowledge--no commissioners were made aware of the initial complaints that were made in the summer of 2018. I just found out about them recently from some current and former employees who gave me information about these complaints that were not worked, the ones where our existing policy was not followed.

Yes, yes------we were all told about the subsequent state investigation, however.

Yes, we got a thorough debrief about that issue. Ooooh yes we did.

But nothing about what glaringly appears to have been the pretext to the state charges, the initial harassment complaints that were ignored and subsequently buried by administration.  Seems fishy to me..........

But What IF??

What if these same employees knew there was a mechanism for an immediate appeal to the BCC for the lack of follow-through on their initial harassment complaints?   Imagine how differently the last 18 months could have been?

We would have looked at it, we would have acted, and/or the administration would have acted--I'm confident of this.  Otherwise---administrative staff in the county would have known that we, the BCC, would possibly get a crack at these complaints out in the open on the dais-------which would be messy.  And they would not want that.

So a stand alone policy like this makes sense in two ways:

1.) an extra layer of protection for employees
2.) an additional inducement for staff to follow existing policy dutifully and with fidelity

More about this in part II.