TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Taxpayers Will Pay The Price In White's Sexual Harassment Case

ADVERTISEMENT

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 11, 2008

Hillsborough Commissioner Kevin White deserves his day in court on allegations that he sexually harassed a former aide. But no matter how this case turns out, taxpayers will pay the price.
Attorney fees could cost citizens as much as $100,000. And if former aide Alyssa Ogden prevails, the county could face significant exposure for having failed to adopt appropriate personnel systems and training to prevent sexual harassment in the commission's suite.

Nevertheless, commissioners should ignore any suggestion that the case be settled out of court.
County Attorney Renee Lee likes to make problems quietly go away by handing out significant sums of taxpayer dollars, but settling a case that involves a sitting commissioner who says he's been falsely accused would set a terrible precedent.

Indeed, it could encourage employees to file false claims for a quick payday.

For his part, White should continue to insist that the whole story come out. "I want to be 100 percent exonerated," he says.

White says Ogden was dismissed because of poor job performance and that her failures were well documented.

He admits to having made a mistake in hiring the former nanny and filing clerk for a job that pays nearly $40,000 a year. But he says he's only guilty of bad judgment in hiring.

Ogden says in her lawsuit that White began making sexual advances toward her soon after she was hired in 2007. She describes a trip to Atlanta two days after she was hired in which she accuses White of trying to sleep in her hotel bed. The harassment continued during her seven months with the county, her lawsuit says, with White begging her to "give him a chance."

White says there's more to the story and anyone can be falsely accused. True enough. Citizens should suspend judgment until a court decides the facts.

But this much we can say: Lapses in the county's personnel and training policies have exposed taxpayers to enormous risk.
Litigation experts say companies can win harassment cases if they have a good written policy, a user-friendly complaint procedure and defined penalties for inappropriate behavior.

But Ogden's attorney said the young woman had no idea how to handle the harassment, having been given no guidance on how to properly report such a situation.

Most companies require employees to attend anti-harassment training, but the county does not require commissioners or their aides to attend because they are not covered by civil service rules.

This distinction could be important to a jury weighing the county's commitment to a harassment-free workplace. After all, the cases of former U.S. Sen. Bob Packwood and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas showed the world that harassment can happen anywhere, even in the most high-profile environments.

As long as taxpayers must pick up the tab, the county has an obligation to prevent harassment and mitigate damages - no matter where it might happen.

The White case could take a year to resolve, but County Administrator Pat Bean should waste not another minute in creating procedures that make the next lawsuit more defensible.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT