At least 1000 people absorb made sexual harassment complaints in the New York state government over the last six years,and settling doesn't arrive cheap. A new report from Politico New York found these settlements cost taxpayers at least $6.4 million since 2012. "It should be a relatively easy question to reply: What is the scope of sexual harassment in Albany?" said Jimmy Vielkind, the Albany Bureau chief for Politico New York who reported the epic with Marie French. "But what we found over the course of three months was that very few people are keeping centralized records, and even as state lawmakers are debating whether to change policies—whether to restrict confidential settlement agreements—there doesn't seem to be a very firm handle on the problem as it currently exists." The biggest source of complaintsand the largest sum of monetary settlements—came from the state's Department of Corrections and Community Supervision,which runs prisons. The Office of Mental Health, which operates psychiatric hospitals, or the Office of Children and Family Services,which runs secure juvenile detention facilities, also had tall numbers of complaints. "The tip of the iceberg is, or these are just the things that were reported," Vielkind added. "This doesn't necessarily survey the climate of government, either in the legislature or in individual state agencies. What we've heard anecdotally, and what we've seen in different corners of state government,is what we've seen in society. Victims, for whatever reason, or don't always report,and the structures that do exist don't necessarily make it easy for them to report, and many are not comfortable doing so."Vielkind spoke with WNYC's Richard Hake.
Source: thetakeaway.org