iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — The congressional office that has been using taxpayer funds to secretly settle cases of sexual harassment on Capitol Hill lifted the veil on a sliver of data on Tuesday, showing that between 2007 and 2017, it paid out $115,000 to staffers who had filed workplace sexual harassment complaints while employed by a member of the House of Representatives.
Last month, ABC News reported exclusively that close to $100,000 of those funds were used to settle sexual harassment claims by two young male staffers who were working for disgraced former Congressman Eric Massa. James D. Doyle, Massa’s attorney in New York, said the former congressman had no knowledge of the payments to his staffers from the Congressional Office of Compliance (OOC).
In response to a request for information, the OOC sent a letter Tuesday to the Chairman of the House Administration Committee, Rep. Gregg Harper, R-Miss., stating that in the last 10 years, it awarded $342,225.85 in 15 cases ranging from accusations of sexual harassment to sexual and racial discrimination.
The OOC, now in the spotlight amid a wave of sexual harassment complaints on Capitol Hill, said last month that in total it has paid out more than $17 million in taxpayer dollars over 20 years to settle workplace complaints in Congress and the legislative branch.
Yet there is still so much data the office will not provide, including the total amount of taxpayer dollars it used to settle accusations of sexual harassment specifically or the identities of those lawmakers involved.
“Under current law, the OOC is not authorized to release information about individual awards and settlements,” the office said in a statement.
The OOC can, however, release some limited information to its oversight committees, as it did in the House of Representatives on Tuesday. That explains why Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., was rejected when he made a similar request for information on Dec. 6 asking for details on all sexual harassment claims made against senators and members of their personal and committee staff, as well as the total settlement amounts.
Laura Cech, a spokesman for the OOC, said the compliance office released some responsive information to its oversight committee — in this case, the Senate Rules Committee, not Kaine’s office — and said that it is “up to the committees to determine whether to release the information.” That information, according to the response the OOC sent to Kaine, includes a statistical breakdown of settlement amounts involving Senate employing offices from 1997-2017.
“I think the Senate Rules Committee has the information I’m asking for, and so now I’ve got to go to the Rules Committee and try to get it out,” Kaine told ABC News on Tuesday.
ABC News has reached out to the Rules Committee and requested they release that information.
Meanwhile, the OOC suggested that if members of Congress want to make settlement data public, they need to change the law.
Chairman Harper told the New York Times on Tuesday that there are plans to introduce a bipartisan bill this week that would, among other things, require members to reimburse taxpayers for settlements made on their behalf.
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