Why an Independent Appeal Process to the BCC Makes Sense Part III: Do We Already Have One??

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---but do we already have one if we want it?

Although I'm told there has been some fictional propaganda put out on social media by Commissioner Underhill to the contrary--the fact of the matter is that we, the full BCC, will be discussing the idea of a stand alone appeal process to the full BCC for County Administrator final decisions on harassment complaints.

I believe this is a necessary discussion because our very prescriptive anti-harassment policy has not been followed in a half-dozen instances over the last year and employees have been treated very poorly as a result and costly lawsuits have ensued.

So YES---we will be having this deep dive discussion at our Committee of the Whole in March.  This scheduling of this discussion came out of our meeting on Tuesday, and the direction was crystal clear and unambiguous to Janice--so I have no idea where any notion to the contrary might have come from or where anyone with a brain could state "Jeff had no support for the discussion of an appeal process for harassment."  I guess some people simply live in their own fantasy world.....

Nevertheless, during the discussions on Tuesday I deliberately asked some very specific questions about what it is we could compel our administrator to do if the full board was to vote to ask for a particular harassment decision to be re-investigated.  Somewhat surprisingly, the answer from our attorney is/was that YES we could compel the re-opening of an employee harassment investigation that was/is decided/concluded.  Now, this is not exactly an appeal to the full board for us to make the final determination--but it is a mechanism that apparently exists that would force a new look.

Which is precisely what is needed in several "decided" harassment complaints that were not conducted properly over the last 12 months and where our policy was not followed.

Once an investigation is closed and decided--the information becomes a public record, as is the case of the Selover harassment complaint, thus the continuing discussion.

But knowing the full board could remand a particular case back to the administrator to conduct a new investigation is powerful.

my question on this topic:

"Alison-

This morning when I asked your opinion about IF the board could vote to compel the administrator to open a new investigation into Matt Selover’s harassment—you said “yes”.

Is that still your opinion, I mean if there were three votes to request this?

Her response:

"Yes, you can.  You shouldn’t dictate a disciplinary action, but that’s different than directing her to reopen an investigation. "