Honestly, how can anybody be shocked at sexual peccadilloes and misconduct by figures involved in California government? It’s about as shocking as Claude Rains ‘discovering’ that gambling was going on at Rick’s Place in Casablanca.
A July 16, 2009 Los Angeles Times story by Patrick McGreevy pointed to the following cases:
* In 2005, lawmakers spent nearly $50,000 to settle a staffer’s complaint of sexual harassment against then-Assemblywoman Rebecca Cohn, a Democrat from Saratoga.
* In 1998, then-Senate leader John Burton approved a $117,200 settlement of a claim by a female Senate staffer who alleged that then-Sen. Richard Polanco, a Democrat from Los Angeles, discriminated against her. Details did not emerge for two years; even senators who were on the Senate Rules Committee said they learned about it from news reports.
Burton, a San Francisco Democrat who last year settled a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against him by the head of a nonprofit foundation he created for homeless children, said at the time of the Polanco settlement that it was entered into on the advice of attorneys for the Senate.
* In 1997, the state paid a $360,000 settlement to a woman who accused then-Assemblyman Mickey Conroy of Orange of sexual harassment. A jury had earlier found Conroy, a Republican, not guilty of that charge, although it did find he had inflicted emotional distress.
* In 1995, a former Assembly employee received $59,500 to settle a complaint in which she said a top aide to former Assemblyman Rusty Areias, a San Jose Democrat, made “unwelcome sexual advances.”
* In 1993, the Assembly paid $10,000 to a secretary who complained that over a two-year period, she was the target of vulgar sexual remarks made by her boss, then-Assemblyman Trice Harvey, a Republican from Bakersfield.
Without naming names, a former staffer for one of the above told me around the time it first came out in the press, that one of the above actually involved three children fathered by a certain legislator with more than one staffer! As far as I know, that tidbit was never revealed publicly.
This is why in the 2002-2003 legislative session, I authored what became AB 1617, introduced by then Assembly Member Cindy Montanez, to put teeth into the laws governing sexual harassment in the workplace, amongst other things. It would have insured that the legal standards was that government and the private sector would have to use investigators in these cases that were independent, unbiased, and above all, competent by industry standards to investigate these situations. Furthermore, AB 1617 would have enabled the trier of fact in any lawsuit over harassment to consider specific examples of an employer’s response to a finding of sexual harassment and put the employer’s conduct at issue if instead of meting out actual punishment, the employer did something that was welcomed by the harasser, such as giving them a promotion.
The bill didn’t pass. In fact, due to threats by the State Chamber of Commerce and other employer organizations to effectively shut down Cindy Montanez’s legislative office with a massive telephoning blitz by their members, it didn’t even get a committee hearing. But it did go on to become national policy for the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). The original sponsor was San Fernando Valley/Northeast Los Angeles NOW and the bill received important support from the California Association of Licenced Investigators (CALI) and many other groups throughout California.
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