The Sacramento city council approved some big changes relating to its sexual harassment policy at Tuesday night's meeting.
City hall has been marred with recent allegations of sexual harassment. In the past few months, there have been three such claims against the city.
Most recently, a former staffer accused city councilman Allen Warren of sexual harassment for allegedly using his authority to coerce his subordinate into sexual acts. Warren has denied the allegations.
An ex-city utilities employee also accused a supervisor of sexual abuse and a sexual harassment case against Mayor Kevin Johnson was thrown out back in May.
In response to the claims, council member Steve Hansen called on the city's auditor to look at the city's policies. "We need to tell our employees and the public that we have a safe place to work here," said Hansen.
The auditor found that the city's sexual harassment policy needs to be updated to meet state requirements. "They haven't been materially updated in quite some time," said Jorge Oseguera, Sacramento's city auditor. "I think there was an opportunity missed there but I think this also presents an opportunity to identify those shortcomings and correct them going forward."
Council voted to approve 10 recommended changes, including reviewing and updating policies on an annual basis, improving sexual harassment prevention training and requiring council members to complete such trainings.
"I wish that we were in a better spot but we have a road map to get there," said Hansen.
City officials said the recommendations will keep people from falling through the cracks. "Given our scrutiny, we are very particular about trying to capture everyone possible and so we identified a couple of opportunities that we had unfortunately missed in identifying all of the eligible employees," said Oseguera.
