Mayor de Blasio on Monday crowed about a new package of bills targeting sexual harassment — while his own administration refuses to explain how it’s dealing with the same sleazy conduct.
“All these legislation taken together will make this city fairer and safer by strengthening sexual-harassment protections,” de Blasio said at a public hearing on 11 new proposed laws. “I’m looking forward to [signing] it.”
City Hall recently revealed that there had been 1,425 complaints of sexual harassment against municipal workers filed between July 2013 and December 2017 — of which 221 were substantiated.
But the city didn’t provide information on what, if anything, it did to discipline workers in the substantiated cases — which includes as many as five people in the mayor’s office.
Following heat from the press, officials have since agreed to provide an aggregate picture of how punishment was meted out, but won’t break it down by department.
Hizzoner also came under fire last week for questioning whether the harassment reports were legitimate, blaming the 471 that came out of the Department of Education on a “hyper-complaint dynamic” at the city agency.
“It is a known fact that unfortunately, there’s been a bit of a hyper-complaint dynamic, sometimes for the wrong reason,” he said.
The bills discussed Monday include legislation to extend the statute of limitations on filing such complaints from one to three years, as well as mandating annual reporting of sexual harassment cases across city agencies.
One proposal requires anti-sexual harassment training for private employers.
The hearing at City Hall gave the public an 11th-hour chance to weigh in on the measures, but in the end, only one person spoke.
Mayoral hearings on legislation are often sparsely attended because they are largely a formality since the bills have already passed the City Council.
De Blasio will sign the sexual-harassment bills next week.