Mayor Durkan begins overhaul of city's harassment reporting system

Nearly a year after Seattle City Light employees started coming forward to describe sexual harassment in their department, Mayor Jenny Durkan has announced changes to the way harassment complaints handled in city government.

Mayor Durkan's proposed budget includes $800,000 to overhaul the system over two years.

In an announcement released to the press today, Mayor Durkan said she will create a new investigations unit in the city Department of Human Resources and a new office to support employees who report harassment. The new unit and department follow up on Durkan’s promise to move harassment investigations handled within individual departments to a centralized system.

Employees have long expressed concern that harassment complaints handled within departments end up protecting the department over employees. Four City Light employees sued the city in 2014, claiming that they were retaliated against after reporting age, race, and gender-based discrimination. Last year, a group of city employees calling themselves the Seattle Silence Breakers started demanding change after new reports of sexual harassment at City Light. 

While these issues and others were roiling the department, City Light CEO Larry Weiss resigned. The nominee selected to replace him is Debra Smith, former CEO and general manager of a public utility district in Newport Oregon.

In a letter published Friday afternoon, the Silence Breakers asked the city to provide “full, independent outside investigations of harassment and discrimination allegations citywide.” The letter continued: “City HR Departments have proven themselves incapable of conducting this work in a fair and unbiased manner.”

Following up on recommendations from an anti-harassment interdepartmental team including the Silence Breakers, Durkan also said that she is creating an independent office to give employees “a safe, confidential space to discuss instances of misconduct.” That office, called the Office of the Employee Ombud, is meant to function outside of the Seattle Department of Human Resources. The Employee Ombud office will also report on “systemic impacts and patterns of misconduct” to the Mayor’s Office, Durkan said. Her budget puts $563,598 toward the new office.

Durkan’s announcement also said that both the Seattle Department of Human Resources and the Office of Civil Rights will create new anti-harassment and anti-discrimination trainings for employees.

But the Silence Breakers aren’t done demanding change. In addition to asking that the city change the way it handles reports of harassment from employees, the Silence Breakers are asking that the city take a more aggressive approach to creating “an inclusive workforce at all levels,” including explicit goals for diverse recruitment.