Elsinore Lawmaker's Proposal to Protect Whistleblowers Advances

RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CA — A Riverside County lawmaker's proposal to establish protections for legislative staffers who report ethics or other breaches related to sexual harassment and other misconduct by their bosses was approved Thursday by the Senate.

Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, celebrated the upper chamber's 38-0 vote, with one abstention and one absence, on Assembly Bill No. 403, saying it moves the state "one step closer to providing victims of sexual harassment the protections they deserve."

"No woman, or man, should ever have to risk their careers and livelihood for reporting sexual harassment or any other type of illegal behavior," Melendez said.

The bill, known as the Legislative Employee Whistleblower Protection Act, has been carried by Melendez in the same general form for the last four years. Previous bills netted wide bipartisan support and passed the Assembly but were held up and died due to inaction in the Senate Appropriations Committee, chaired by Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Long Beach.

The current bill, now headed to the Assembly, was co-sponsored by multiple legislators, including Assemblymembers Laura Friedman of Glendale and Cristina Garcia of Bell Gardens, both Democrats. Garcia also chairs the Legislative Women's Caucus.

Senate Republican Leader Patricia Bates of Laguna Niguel presented AB 403 on the floor of the Senate Thursday morning and was heartened by the near- unanimous support from her colleagues, whose votes affirmed that is was no longer "business as usual" in the Legislature.

"Assemblywoman Melendez deserves tremendous credit for resisting repeated attempts to bury her bill over the past four years," Bates said. "She -- along with bipartisan allies in the capital community -- persisted in pushing this bill through the Senate. The simple truth is that if it wasn't for their determined efforts, today's vote would never have happened."

AB 403 replicates the measures Melendez introduced in prior years, seeking to ensure that members of the Legislature, as well as their agents, face consequences for intimidating or threatening a person who attempts to draw attention to their misdeeds.

The legislation specifies that any lawmaker, or someone on his or her staff, "who interferes with, or retaliates against, a legislative employee's exercise of the right to make a protected disclosure (regarding activity) that may constitute a violation of law, including sexual harassment, or a violation of a legislative standard of conduct" shall be subject to criminal and civil penalties.

Those would include a fine of $10,000 and a year in county jail.

A victim would also have the right to file a lawsuit and seek damages.

The law is intended to provide the same protections afforded employees in state agencies and the courts under the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1999, which freed impacted parties to file ethics complaints or other official allegations of wrongdoing without fear of retaliation.

— By City News Service / Image via Shutterstock