Who did not see this coming?
A day after a Senate Rules attorney submitted his report on the allegations made by former legislative assistant Michael Polloni against Wendy Rogers, the Senate Ethics Committee, in a three to two party-line decision, voted to dismiss the ethics complaint against the Legislative District (LD) Six Senator.
Rogers-Investigation-Report-Attachments
While the investigation report found evidence to support some of Mr. Polloni’s allegations (like Senator Rogers’s comments about his weight and her berating him behind closed office doors,) many of the other complaints came down to “he said, she said.”
Despite that, the two Democrats on the Senate Ethics Committee, Victoria Steele and Kirsten Engel, according to reporting by Yellow Sheet, wanted to move on to a full hearing.
Senator Steele commented:
“There are assistants, pages, other people in this building who are looking at what we do here. We have evidence to support Mr. Polloni’s accusation that the senator yelled, that she saw him crying, that she swore at him. “I don’t want assistants in this building thinking that it’s OK for them to be treated this way.”
Senator Engel concurred with Steele’s sentiments.
The three Republicans on the Committee (Senators Sine Kerr, Vince Leach, and Tyler Pace) obviously saw the prospects of moving forward against Roger differently.
All Republicans on the Committee, according to reporting by Yellow Sheet, did not see how the accusations made by Polloni met the “clear and convincing” standard of moving forward to a hearing.
Looking at the documentation, it was clear and convincing from the third-party eyewitness account that Senator Rogers had a closed-door tirade against Mr. Polloni.
Senator Pace contended that “A hearing wouldn’t provide any more information than has already been asked for.”
The three Republicans also voted against a compromise measure offered by Senator Engel that would have dismissed the complaint in exchange for Senator Rogers attending a four-hour course on how supervisors should act toward the people under them.
That vote on that sensible compromise is perhaps more outrageous and telling on what some legislators feel about relations with staff than the straight vote to dismiss.
All three Senators said both sides should make their cases in court. The attorney for Mr. Polloni, Adam Kwasman, assured reporters they would do that.
Was there enough to proceed with a full Ethics Committee to examine Rogers’s behavior and actions?
While Senator Pace is right that no new evidence may have arisen, Senators Engel and Steele are also correct in conveying that legislative staffers have a right to work in an environment where they are not harassed and mistreated. They also deserve a workplace environment where individuals that mistreat them are held accountable.
Senator Rogers should have gone through the full hearing process and she should have been made to go to that four-hour supervisor course.
The people that work at the Arizona State Legislature deserved that much.