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CityAndStateNY.com
February 21, 2022
Local governments may finally be held responsible when elected officials commit sexual harassment. By Zach Williams
E
LECTED OFFICIALS IN all three branches of government might get clarification soon on who exactly they work for. A key step involves the Assembly Codes Committee, which passed the legislation on Feb. 15 that would close a legal loophole that exempts local and state governments from being responsible for sexual harassment committed by public officials. Past court rulings have held that they did not technically work for their city, county, town, village or the state Legislature. The bill was a top priority for the Sexual Harassment Working Group, made up of former state Senate and Assembly staffers, as part of a package of six bills aimed at addressing misconduct by public officials. The bills have remained stuck in political limbo in the year after a litany of allegations against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (who resigned in August as he faced impeachment for a range of alleged wrongdoing) highlighted the outstanding problem of sexual harassment in state government, but that could change if key bills are approved by the Legislature amid a wider push for ethics reform this year. “For too long, our own state government has stood outside and largely above the law when it comes to sexual harassment,” Assembly Member Yuh-Line Niou, a former legislative staffer who is sponsoring the bill with state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, said in a text message. “This is a critical step towards ending the culture of impunity that has made Albany a toxic workplace for staffers and a source of shame in our mishandling of their sexual harassment complaints.” Passage through the Codes Committee came two weeks after her bill was approved by the Governmental Operations Committee, where it died last year. This opened the way for the legislation to reach the Assembly floor in the coming days, where it could become the first of the six bills to pass the chamber. Exactly when that might happen remained unclear. “Once it gets out of committee, presumably it would go to the floor,” Codes Committee Chair Jeffrey Dinowitz told City & State. When asked about a timetable for passing the package, a spokesperson for Assembly Speaker
Carl Heastie said, “There are bills moving through our committee process and being vetted by our members.” Other legislation in the package backed by the working group would double the statute of limitations on workplace harassment from three years to six years, limit how nondisclosure agreements can be enforced and bar the use of “no-rehire clauses” in settlement agreements that prohibit the employee from seeking another job with their company. Another bill would require lobbyists to complete antisexual harassment training annually. A sixth bill would expand whistleblower protections for people who report abuse. The first four bills await votes by the full Senate while the final two bills remain in committee. A spokesperson for state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins did not respond to a request for comment by publication time. Legislative progress does not amount to real world change, however, until bills get through both houses of the state Legislature and signed into law by the governor. That happened in 2019 when the previously narrow legal definition of sexual harassment got changed after a blockbuster hearing by members of the state Senate and Assembly on sexual harassment in state government. “If you’ve got a scorecard looking at progress made in Albany over the last two years, then we deserve pretty high marks in comparison to the years before,” longtime state Sen. Liz Krueger said. Misconduct allegations against Cuomo renewed calls for additional reforms last year as former staffers and other women came forward. The state Senate passed the legislative package backed by the working group, with the exception of the whistleblower bill, on May 26. The same day, Heastie announced the formation of the Assembly Workgroup on Sexual Harassment. “There just doesn’t seem to be a sense of urgency around protecting workers,” Erica Vladimer, a co-founder of the Sexual Harassment Working Group, said in an interview. The lack of progress in the Assembly came down to the bill not getting through the relevant committee before the legisla-
TIMOTHY NIOU; NYS MEDIA SERVICES
Accountability in Albany?
