At least $600,000 in public money

At least $600,000 in public money spent settling Senate misconduct claims since 1997

By ELANA SCHOR

At least $600,000 in public money has been spent over the past 20 years to settle 13 workplace misconduct claims against senators' offices, including $14,260 for a single settlement alleging sex discrimination, according to data released late Thursday.

The information on workplace harassment payouts from a fund maintained by Capitol Hill's Office of Compliance, divulged by the Senate Rules and Appropriations Committees, does not include any details on which offices the payments correspond to. Its release came as the Rules panel, led by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), faced pressure from both sides of the aisle to join the House in opening the Senate's taxpayer-funded settlement books amid a national outcry over sexual harassment.

The Senate’s single claim of sex discrimination in the data released late Thursday included no data on whether sexual harassment was involved — the two have generally not been distinguished in congressional misconduct record keeping. Senators' offices paid $21,420 to settle two claims involving racial discrimination, $89,800 to settle three claims involving disability discrimination, and $286,786 to settle eight claims that involved age discrimination, according to the data.

One of those age-related claims was a single $102,904 settlement that also involved discrimination based on national origin and reprisal, the largest single settlement paid out since 1997 from a senator's office. Congressional office misconduct claims filed with the compliance office can touch on multiple categories of harassment.

The two committees' representatives said in a statement accompanying the information that aides had met with the Senate Legal Counsel's office to verify that the data could be released to the public without compromising the identity of harassment victims who participated in a confidential settlement process.

“While the Rules Committee has been eager to provide this information in a transparent manner, it has been our priority to protect the victims involved in these settlements from further harm," Shelby said.

The House released its own harassment settlement data for the past five years earlier this month, including an $84,000 sexual harassment settlement that POLITICO later linked to Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas). After Sen. Tim Kaine's (D-Va.) attempt to obtain similar Senate information was rejected earlier this week, however, the House released further data on past harassment settlements and Shelby escalated consultations with colleagues on releasing the upper chamber's figures.

"This is the first step toward a more transparent reporting system for harassment in Congress to hold people accountable for their actions," Kaine said in a statement on the Rules and Appropriations committees' release of the data.

The data released Thursday also includes workplace settlement figures for other Senate offices not led by a member. Over the past 20 years, those offices have paid out $853,225 to resolve 10 settlements, including $56,000 to resolve three claims involving sex discrimination.

The statistics for both the Senate and House include only claims paid from the compliance office's fund set aside for handling workplace misconduct and do not encompass settlements that may have been paid from lawmakers' taxpayer-funded office budgets. Former Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), for example, used his office budget to pay $27,000 in 2015 to settle a sexual harassment claim brought by a former aide.

A senior Republican member of the Rules panel who's closely involved in negotiations on reforming Hill harassment policy, West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said earlier Thursday that she supports the release of the Senate harassment settlement data because “transparency is the best way to figure out how to handle situations, and the American people want to know.”

“We could mirror the way the House has done it, without full disclosure, but even then I think people are going to keep asking the question” of which members may be tied to settlements, Capito added. “I would.”