Common Council updates anti-harassment policy
Elected and appointed officials in Milwaukee will be subject to the city’s anti-harassment policy that applies to employees under a measure the Common Council approved Tuesday.
The move comes more than a year after an investigation into harassment allegations against City Attorney Tearman Spencer determined he was not subject to the city’s anti-harassment policy because he is elected. That report was finished Dec. 28, 2020.
The legislation directs the city’s Department of Employee Relations to update the city’s anti-harassment and workplace violence policy to include elected officials and appointees.
It states that the Department of Employee Relations can hold elected officials accountable up to a written warning. For a higher-level response, the department can defer to a city ordinance that under certain circumstances empowers a majority of the council to “dismiss from office” elected officials and appointees, except justices of the peace.
Acting Mayor Cavalier Johnson, who is also Common Council president pending April’s mayoral election, did not attend the meeting. He cannot vote on the council for the period that he holds both positions.
Asked whether Johnson would sign the legislation, his spokesman said Tuesday that his office had not yet received the files from the council.
“He is certainly supportive of a safe, harassmentfree workplace,” spokesman Jeff Fleming said via text message. “He believes elected officials should be accountable for that.”
The measure was first proposed in June but was held from action at that time.
It was supported Tuesday by the 14 members of the Common Council who were present at the meeting.
Ald. JoCasta Zamarripa co-sponsored the measure with Ald. Michael Murphy.
She said in an earlier committee meeting that the measure was the product of legislation that directed the Department of Employee Relations to provide the council with recommendations for ensuring that elected officials be subject to the city’s harassment and intimidation policies. That measure gained unanimous council support in May.
Zamarripa and Murphy introduced a series of measures in response to the findings of the investigation into Spencer’s conduct. Spencer denied the allegations against him.
Another requiring ethics and harassment training for elected officials, cabinet members and appointees within 120 days of taking office and every four years after that also gained council approval in November.
A third, though, that would have changed city charter to add inefficiency, neglect of duty and official misconduct to the reasons that a majority of the council could remove an official from office, in addition to malfeasance, has remained in committee since late June.