Council beyond reach of city’s workplace rules

A routine item on the Coeur d’Alene City Council agenda became a brief referendum on sexual harassment, workplace violence and the Second Amendment.

Tuesday’s debate began as Melissa Tosi, director of Human Resources, proposed housekeeping changes to city policy: changes, for example, that update workplace harassment language specifying who doles out discipline.

Tosi’s proposal would have included elected city officials with a code of conduct that currently applies to city employees. Councilmember Dan Gookin then questioned the reach of that proposal, saying elected officials could not be disciplined by Human Resources.

“I’m not trying to say any of us are above the law,” Gookin said. “We’re not. In fact, the law is above us, because we are covered by state statute … regarding ethics and other items the [Idaho Legislature] figure are important enough that it’s going to be in state code, not city policy.”

The problem is, neither Idaho nor Coeur d’Alene has a provision that dictates the behavior of an elected city or county official, outside of bribery, finance laws and conflicts of interest. Municipalities are empowered to create their own standards. Boise, for example, has an ethics committee consisting of two council appointees, two mayoral appointees and a city employee.

“Putting [language in the HR proposal] is not applicable because we’re not technically employees of the city,” Gookin explained. “We’re hired by the public, and therefore we’re outside of that realm. You can’t apply disciplinary action against an elected official because, quite frankly, we won an election. We’re here for four years, whether you like us or not.”

“If you have a drug and alcohol policy,” Tosi responded, “a harassment policy, a violence-in-the-workplace policy, a code of conduct [policy] … generally, those are all policies that everybody included in city business should apply to. Those type of policies lead from the top.”

Councilmember Christie Wood said she agreed with Gookin.

“I think that [the proposal is] well intended, because elected officials should have a code of conduct, but the reality is there is no remedy if we violate the code of conduct,” she said.

Tosi agreed with Gookin’s and Wood’s take that the city’s existing discipline language was not designed to address elected officials, but that the spirit of the workplace rules should transcend the technical challenges.

“You don’t fall under the discipline policy,” she agreed.

This carried over into the workplace violence section, which proposed that elected officials should — just as city employees — be prohibited from carrying firearms into city buildings.

“Big Second Amendment supporter here,” Gookin said. “Basically, you’re saying an elected official who again is allowed by state statute to conceal-carry without a permit, you’re saying we can’t do that in any city function?”

While neither City Hall nor the public library are gun-free zones, current city ordinances prohibit employees from carrying weapons in buildings.

“You realize most mass shootings take place in gun-free zones,” Gookin said. “You have a library employee who’s gone through the training and has a concealed carry permit because she doesn’t want to be attacked on her way to her car in the middle of the night when she’s off work, and we’re saying she can’t have a gun [in city buildings]. I oppose that.”

Gookin further suggested that a mechanism to discipline elected officials already exists.

“So, if there’s a sexual harassment issue, you don’t think [the Coeur d’Alene] Press is going to write about that, and that’s going to be a lot of bad PR? I think the system works the way it is. Whatever you want to do [in Human Resources] is not going to have the same repercussions as an elected official who’s an ass, who’s going to take the public heat for it, potentially get recalled, definitely not get re-elected. I think the system is already designed to deal with something like that.”

Only Councilmember Dan English voiced his support for including elected officials in the proposal’s language.

“I think this is highly appropriate to have in there,” he said. “… From where I’m sitting, I would rather give the comfort to the employees that, if there’s somebody behaving badly, they shouldn’t have to go out and get whatever thousands of signatures and trigger a recall election. They should at least be able to have their voices heard.”

The council voted to eliminate its own inclusion in the new workplace rules and instead form an ad hoc committee to create its own policies.

The move also removed council from the only existing workplace ordinance that mentions elected officials: the city’s drug and alcohol policies.

“Ya-hoo,” Councilmember Woody McEvers jokingly cheered.