Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has not heard Rep. Steve Lebsock’s defense but said if the allegations against the Democratic lawmaker are found to be true, he should resign.

“That balance of how do you protect an individual’s right to file a complaint but at the same time recognize someone who’s being (accused), they need to have the opportunity to speak up on their own defense,” Hickenlooper said. “And that’s hard to do with the privacy, right?”

He’s referring to the formal complaint process, which protects the identity of potential victims. That could make it difficult for someone accused of sexual misconduct, or any other kind of workplace harassment, to speak to a particular situation or defend themselves.

Hickenlooper said elected officials should be held to a certain standard of behavior but that looking at specifics is key.

“If you whistle at a woman who walks by, is that good behavior? No,” he said. “But do you ask someone to step down because they do something stupid one time? Maybe not.”

However, if Lebsock is found to have repeatedly acted “in very poor taste,” Hickenlooper said, or if his actions “were leveraging his authority,” he should resign.

State House and Senate leadership will meet Friday to discuss the legislature’s current workplace harassment policy and whether outside counsel should be brought in to facilitate the formal complaint process. Some victims have said the fear of political pushback if they made a formal complaint to legislative leaders has kept them silent. House Speaker Crisanta Duran and others say hiring a neutral third party to handle complaints at the outset could help abate such fears.

“I think there’s so much politics in the building … it probably wouldn’t hurt to have a third party have some role in evaluation,” Hickenlooper said. “The trick here is to try to find – where do you get the maximum benefit, and how much – we want to make sure that women feel safe to come forward and speak. So we’ve got to recognize that we respect their right of privacy when they come forward and make a complaint, but at the same time someone who has had a complaint filed against them, they have the right to defend themselves.”