By now you’ve probably read at least something about the scandals surrounding former state Rep. Harry Benton, D-Plainfield.
In a nutshell, a young female district office staffer alleged Benton sexually harassed her in 2023. Two of House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch top staffers asked her to file a complaint with the legislative inspector general, but she refused. Welch’s caucus committee, Democrats for the Illinois House, then contributed $1.4 million to Benton’s reelection campaign.
Earlier this year, Welch quietly kicked Benton out of the House Democratic caucus, and stripped Benton of all his committee assignments and staff access. Then, in early July, Welch announced that he had received the legislative inspector general’s report and called on Benton to resign or be expelled from the House. Benton stepped down.
Subsequent reporting by the Chicago Tribune found that Benton had made some highly inappropriate comments to a female lobbyist, which was also reported to the legislative inspector general. The Tribune also tracked down the former female staffer, who detailed Benton’s behavior but also said that when she’d subsequently asked Welch for career advice, he suggested they meet at a local restaurant’s bar.
Welch went into damage control and met privately with most of his members in groups. Some of his members were skeptical of his answers, and his future is at least somewhat uncertain.
One member asked, for example, if any other stories would come out about him. He said that since he didn’t realize he had made the young woman uncomfortable by posting “heart eyes” emojis on her online photos and suggesting a meeting in a swanky bar, he had no idea if more might come out.
Another member pointed out that Welch was willing to meet with the young woman, but House Democrats are regularly told to meet with staff if they have an issue.
If House Democrats are looking for ways to prevent another fiasco, they could make a policy change that might help.
One structural problem is that House district office employees, like that young woman, do not have the right to expect the chamber’s Human Resource Office will do anything for them.
For the last several years, individual House members have been directly in charge of their district office operations. Their district staff, unlike legislative policy or clerk staff, do not work for and are not controlled by the House Speaker’s office.
And that means if a problem arises at the district level, the person responsible for resolving the issue is the House member. Complaints are supposed to go to the member, who is in charge of resolving them.
But if you’re a district staffer being sexually harassed by your employer, that is not an ideal system, to say the least.
According to the House clerk’s office, district office employees are given the option of talking to the chief of staff, the chief legal counsel, the legislative inspector eneral, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Illinois Department of Human Rights.
They can also go to the Human Resource office. But that office is designed to only cover employees of the House Speaker. They can offer advice, but they have no real authority over district-level employees.
It just makes no sense that legislators act as their own HR officers. And it also doesn’t seem fair to subject these district staffers to intimidating and even expensive legal processes when they have a complaint.
I get that members want autonomy over their staffs without direct interference from the speaker’s office, but that’s exactly what happened with Benton when Welch’s chief of staff and chief counsel swooped in to meet with the young woman who accused Benton of going way over the line.
And while I don’t believe the evidence in this case shows that Welch’s former chief of staff and chief legal counsel did anything wrong, those officers have a built-in conflict of interest.
It seems like common sense to send district staffers to an office which has experience working with these sorts of issues, instead of directing them to a quasi-judicial process that will essentially involve interrogation. The state Senate, by the way, allows district office staff full access to its Human Relations office.
Other ideas have also surfaced, including extending the one-year statute of limitations on reporting sexual harassment. Rep. Stephanie Kifowit, D-Oswego, suggested that all staff should be allowed to join a union.
This has to stop.
Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.