The combined forces of Cox media outlets WSB-TV and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution have been hot on the trail of a story about the leadership of the Georgia Senate voting secretly to pay $80,000 to an Atlanta law firm to settle what is reported to be a racial discrimination complaint from a former legislative secretary.
The identity of the employee has not been disclosed and the Senate leaders won’t discuss the case, calling it a “personnel matter.”
An aide to President Pro Tem Tommie Williams (R-Lyons) went so far as to shut a door in the face of WSB reporter Lori Geary as she attempted to ask questions about it.
The Senate Committee on Administrative Affairs apparently voted in July, shortly before the start of the special session on redistricting, to pay the confidential $80,000 settlement. According to capitol sources, the employee in question was dismissed back in 2010.
Students of legislative history will remember that this is not the first time that taxpayer funds have been used to pay for a settlement with a former employee.
In 1993, the state agreed to pay $190,000 to settle a sexual harassment case involving three state senators and a female employee. Here’s how Dick Pettys, who was working for the Associated Press, described the matter in a 2004 wire service article:
In 1989, Jacqueline Livingston filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claiming that while a secretary for the state Senate she was sexually and verbally abused by then-Sens. Hildred Shumake, David Scott and [Eugene] Walker.
The complaint escalated to a federal civil lawsuit in 1992, and was settled a year later.
Shumake died in 2002. Scott is now serving in Congress. His press aide, Rob Griner, said Scott had no comment on the matter.
In the settlement, the state agreed to remove adverse performance evaluations from the woman’s file and pay compensatory damages of $190,000 but did not admit fault.
Mike Bowers, the state’s attorney general at the time, said this week he could not remember specifically why he recommended a settlement.
Generally, he said, he would recommend such a step when he was “worried about the risk if we went forward with the litigation, and the best economic decision the state could make was to avoid the cost, avoid the risk and get out of it. That’s fairly standard.”
