From September 2019 through the end of the fiscal year, the state legislature’s Office of Legislative Workplace Relations received seven complaints about violations of the workplace harassment policy.

“If I had an employer with 500 employees that had only seven complaints of workplace harassment,” said Sen. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, estimating the number of workers at the General Assembly, “I would think that business was doing very well on this account.”

Ben FitzSimons, director of the office, said he could not comment on the nature of the confidential reports, but said that the Executive Committee of the Legislative Council approved the policy last September, which initiated the statistical reporting requirement.

“They used recommendations from a third party consultant, recommendations from an interim legislative committee and internal feedback to assist with their decision making,” FitzSimons said.

In April 2018, the General Assembly created a Legislative Workplace Interim Study Committee one month after the House of Representatives expelled Rep. Steve Lebsock, a Democrat from Thornton who switched his party affiliation to Republican at the last minute, for sexual harassment and retaliation. The committee was responsible for recommending changes to the General Assembly’s workplace harassment policy, evaluating the findings of an independent report, and studying “how to promote cultural change regarding harassment in the workplace.”

The report from Investigations Law Group, LLC in Denver recommended ensuring confidentiality of complaint investigations and resolutions, and in favor of creating a professional, standardized response to complaints.

“While almost everyone we surveyed said they felt ‘safe’ and ‘comfortable’ in the Legislative Workplace, almost 30% reported having seen or experienced harassment (and only a small percentage reported it),” the investigators found based on 528 survey responses. “Another 50% of people have observed sexist behavior and/or reported episodes of seriously disrespectful behavior. This suggests to us that there is work to do.”

Further findings indicated that 91% of the harassment occurred from elected officials, and just 42% of survey respondents believed the existing workplace harassment policy was taken seriously.

Pursuant to the workplace harassment policy effective last Sept. 5, the Office of Legislative Workplace Relations is charged with working with complainants to determine a course of action. An informational resolution entails the office providing resources to the parties involved, including coaching or training. A formal resolution provides a traditional investigation, with slightly different procedures depending on the identity of alleged perpetrators. For violations involving elected officials, the executive summary of the investigation becomes public unless a committee votes to shield the identity.

The office reported that in the policy’s first year, five complaints went through the informal process. Another complaint had no action taken at the complainant’s request, and the final complaint did not fall under the policy. 

Sen. Faith Winter, D-Westminster, was one of the members of the interim committee. She said on Tuesday that she was hopeful the new policy was working.

“To really understand what the seven [complaints] means we will need to compare it to future years and we should do another follow up survey to compare to the survey that informed the Legislative Workplace Interim Committee,” she explained. Winter believed, however, that disclosure of more specific details about the complaints would be counterproductive.

“Having more information be public will result in less people coming forward,” she added. “In our policy the public will be informed if a formal complaint is found more likely than not to have happened and it involves an elected leader. That is the information that is absolutely necessary for the public.”

Gardner, who was also a member of the committee, agreed that future workplace surveys would be valuable. He acknowledged that the pandemic, which forced a hiatus in the session and curtailed in-person contacts, likely made the first year of data somewhat atypical. 

“Statistically over time, it would probably be useful to know how many are gender discrimination, sex discrimination, sexual harassment versus race, ethnicity,” he said. But like Winter, he felt that there was an appropriate balance between releasing the number of reports and their disposition, but withholding other details.

“It’s a small enough community that if you published things much more specific, you might be exposing people that didn’t want that to be published,” he said.

One lobbyist, who asked for anonymity because they were one of the complainants against Lebsock prior to his expulsion, said they were glad the General Assembly had taken action on the issue of workplace harassment, but saw shortcomings with the meager level of reporting.

“It would be nice to know the conclusion. I noticed they take note of complaints that are dismissed, but if there is a plan in place — whether somebody’s taking a class or formally apologized to this person they harassed — it would be nice to know what conclusions are being met….You don’t know if there’s sincerity in the conclusion and people really are learning that this kind of behavior is problematic.”

The lobbyist added that future victims could be reluctant to come forward if they did not perceive a sufficient enforcement mechanism existed.

“The last thing we want is a culture of cover-up, where informal complaints take place and the only resolution is behind closed doors,” they said.

The office also disclosed that it received six concerns that fell under the workplace expectations policy, all of which were addressed informally.