No One Should Meet With Mayor Alone

In your Aug. 12 article, “No One Can Agree on Mayor’s Meeting-With-Women Policy Origin,” you said that, “It’s unclear why all the parties involved seem so preoccupied with the genesis of a relatively minor policy matter.”

It may be that talking about who came up with the policy helps avoid the real issue which is the policy itself: a policy that says women are not permitted to meet alone with Mayor Bob Filner while on city business or in a city building. It doesn’t say men can’t meet alone with the mayor, just women. Really? Who thinks like that?

According to the city attorney’s July 16 memo to interim city COO Walt Ekard, Government Code Section 12940(k) requires an employer “to take all reasonable steps necessary to prevent discrimination and harassment from occurring.”

And what is the city attorney’s solution to prevent women from being harassed? He puts in place a policy that discriminates against women to prevent them from being harassed.

I know of no other city that has (or even needs) such a policy and cannot imagine why anyone would want to take credit for it, let alone argue over who came up with it first. Why not just say that no one can meet alone with the mayor while on city business or in a city building? At least that way women would not be singled out for discriminatory treatment because of Filner’s bad behavior.

Frye’s commentary has been edited for clarity. See anything in there we should fact check? Tell us what to check out here.