California Stopped Tracking Sexual Harassment Complaints Years Ago. That Left Leaders Without Answers In The Me Too Era

Speaker 1: 00:00 When allegations of sexual harassment rocked Sacramento in 2017 questions were raised about how frequent such incidents were. Those answers were nowhere to be found because several years before the state eliminated its system for tracking harassment and discrimination claims. The reasons why and how state leaders are working to reestablish a tracking system or the subject of a new report from Capitol public radio. Joining me as Scott Rod, he is state government reporter with Capitol public radio. And Scott, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me on. Now, when this sexual harassment system was up and running this tracking system, how did it work and how was the information used? Speaker 2: 00:41 So they had a tracking system in place up until 2012 and the state personnel board collected information about the number of complaints that were submitted based on a department and agency. And they took this information, they analyzed how long it took for complaints to be evaluated and if necessary, investigated and resolved. And it also compiled, uh, information in such a way that you could see trends where there may be problem spots in government and where there may be increases. Uh, from year to year, Speaker 1: 01:13 why did the state decide to get rid of it in 2012, Speaker 2: 01:17 it was part of a much larger effort to reorganize human resources in state government. Governor Brown decided to create a new agency that would oversee all human resources in state government and that required a lot of changes, reorganization and cuts to government programs. And this was one piece of that much larger puzzle in terms of a specific answers to why they eliminated this exact program. I couldn't get a clear answer on even the folks who were involved in this decision to eliminate it. They didn't have a very clear recollection. Speaker 1: 01:54 So from your reporting though, cutting the program apparently didn't cause much of a stir back then, did it? Speaker 2: 01:59 No, it was something that seemed fairly noncontroversial. Um, they saw it as just kind of one more program in this much larger effort, um, that, that they decided to eliminate Speaker 1: 02:11 when the, we said enough letter and of course the me too movement brought attention to harassment at the state capitol back of 2017 were state leaders surprised that they had no tracking mechanism in place. Speaker 2: 02:25 I think a number of them were surprised. Yeah. Um, this was something, as I said, uh, w that was eliminated years ago and in the shuffle of a much bigger effort to reorganize government and when this information was needed, most they looked and saw that they didn't have it, but not only that they could have had it if they kept the system. So for um, you know, legislators but also, uh, folks in human resources, uh, that took a look at this issue. A number of them were surprised to find out that the state did have this very valuable information at one point, but decided to get rid of the program. Why is the tracking data on sexual harassment allegations valuable when it comes to reducing incidents? The way that a [inaudible] attorney with a group called equal rights advocates put it is you don't know what you can't see and there's still individual complaints that are collected and reviewed and if necessarily investigated. Speaker 2: 03:22 But what they aren't seeing is the big picture that, uh, the, the larger trends that may show if there are departments where there are a high number of complaints. And if perhaps that needs to be addressed in looking at leadership changes, looking at training changes, uh, and also it's harder to identify repeat offenders or serial offenders. This information allows the state to take proactive steps to figure out, well what is our experience been so far and what can we do to change it based on these larger patterns. And without this information over the last seven years, what's been the impact for people investigating sexual harassment complaints across state agencies? So it's been very difficult for them to see that bigger picture. It's been difficult for them to figure out what sort of policies should be established moving forward to prevent these incidents from happening and to identify problem spots. Speaker 2: 04:21 And again, individual complaints are still examined and still if necessary, investigated. But it's much harder for agencies like the Department of human resources to identify those bigger patterns and see any trends that are happening. Now Governor Brown's administration was working before he left to bring back the complaint tracking system for sexual harassment. Apparently it was supposed to be up and running by the end of last year. So what happened? I think there was an ambitious timeline. Um, the, the head of cal HR has since said that it was probably an unrealistic goal to try to have this thing up and running. It's fairly complicated to make sure that agencies across such a large body as California state government are on the same page about reporting complaints. Um, and, and essentially getting a system like this up and running it is going to be a fairly sophisticated system. This information will be collected automatically and will be processed through, um, a software program that requires training. And that requires kind of relearning how to process these complaints and how to file them so that they're all in one location. So that timeline seemed like it was a bit ambitious, but now they're setting their sights on early 2020 to have this system up and running. I've been speaking with Scott Rod state government reporter with Capitol public radio. Scott, thanks for your time. Thank you.