Congress Mandated Harassment Training; Now They Have to Pay for It – By Katherine Tully-McManus (rollcall.com) / Dec 19 2017
The House and Senate each adopted resolutions mandating harassment and discrimination training for employees of Congress and legislative agencies. Yet it’s not clear how much the training will cost and what it will include.
Lawmakers from both parties are only now starting to take a hard look at the details, even as new allegations against members or revelations about taxpayer-funded settlements emerge almost daily.
The House Administration Committee is scheduled to take an initial step on Tuesday, when it marks up guidelines for implementation of the resolution that the House adopted Nov. 29, which mandated training for all House members and staff.
The panel will approve instructions “so each office knows how to complete this training and provide the necessary documentation,” Chairman Gregg Harper of Mississippi said in an announcement of the meeting.
Still to be tackled is the question of finding the money for the huge training effort for some 30,000 members and staff, an effort that likely will fall to members of the respective appropriations committees.
Appropriators have already begun reaching out to the Office of Compliance to find out what’s needed to meet the training requirements. The new costs could end up in the fiscal 2018 legislative branch appropriations bill, which has yet to be finalized.
The answers are proving elusive so far. The OOC, which handles the sexual harassment training and complaint process in Congress, doesn’t yet know what the new mandates will cost, according to spokeswoman Laura Cech.
“The office has been very encouraged that appropriators in the House and Senate have inquired about what staffing and program increases might be required to respond to the mandates in the resolutions,” Cech said.
Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, the ranking member on the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee, said in an email that new funding is needed to address harassment on Capitol Hill. He has called for investment in mandatory, in-person harassment training.
“This funding is a critical first step to addressing the deep-seated problems we are seeing in the halls of Congress,” he said.
The subcommittee chairman, Kevin Yoder of Kansas, has yet to say how he wants to proceed on any new appropriations for training.
Lawmakers face a deadline on Friday to head off a partial government shutdown. They are expected to pass another short-term continuing resolution into January while they continue talks on overall spending levels and an expected omnibus bill for the rest of fiscal 2018.
But it’s unlikely that anti-harassment and discrimination training funds will be attached to the continuing resolution this week.
Ryan said he does not see it as practical, since the Senate is expected to accept only a stripped-down resolution this week with few if any extraneous riders.
Ryan doesn’t think tacking funds onto the House continuing resolution will get the job done, calling the bill “dead on arrival in the Senate.”
Senate Legislative Branch Appropriations Chairman James Lankford supports new funding, aide D.J. Jordan said. The Oklahoma Republican hasn’t made clear what vehicle he’d rather see the training funds hitch a ride on, however.
Sen. Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, the ranking member on the panel, sees a final fiscal 2018 appropriations omnibus as the preferred vehicle for training funds, not a short-term CR, according to Murphy aide Laura Maloney.
Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats in both chambers are pushing more expansive efforts to reduce harassment on Capitol Hill beyond funds for training.
Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Patty Murray of Washington are looking for sweeping changes to shift the culture — and change the rules.
“The reported accounts of misconduct on Capitol Hill necessitate a review of our workplace culture and processes to ensure that equality and justice prevail throughout,” they wrote in a letter Thursday to Senate leaders and fellow appropriators.
Congress enacted the Congressional Accountability Act in 1995, setting workplace protections for its offices and establishing the OOC. But at that time, lawmakers exempted themselves from mandatory sexual harassment training, which is required in the executive branch.
Collins and Murray urged changes to the act to improve how congressional offices respond to both the causes and consequences of sexual harassment. They say parts of the law “are out of step with best practices and fall short of the expectations for ourselves as public servants” and changes should be made part of a continuing resolution or omnibus bill, along with adequate funding.
Under current policy, the OOC requires 60 days of counseling and mediation before an accuser can request a hearing or file a federal district court case. Interns and fellows cannot use the office to report harassment.
Their letter followed a series of hearings in the House Administration Committee aimed at addressing shortcomings in the process for reporting and responding to harassment complaints.
“Unfortunately, due to the system that Congress created to protect itself from being exposed, there has been no accountability,” California Democrat Jackie Speier said in a November floor speech.
“It’s now clear that this misguided attempt to protect the institution is instead harming it and leaving victims in its wake,” she said in support of the Barbara Comstock resolution that mandated House harassment training.
Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota sponsored the Senate version, which was adopted Nov. 9.
The push for training spending comes as a growing list of lawmakers have already resigned or said they will not run again due to harassment allegations, including Democratic Reps. John Conyers Jr. and Ruben Kihuen, Republican Reps. Blake Farenthold and Trent Franks, and Sen. Al Franken.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/congress-yet-address-costs-details-harassment-training
PB/TK – How about using the money that’s been stashed away for Congressional payoffs of accusers
