Shapiro admin stonewalls on key HR policies in sexual harassment scandal

Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration is refusing to provide copies of the human resources policies that would support its central defense: that Shapiro was kept in the dark for months about sexual harassment allegations against a top aide with whom he had been personally close for years because those policies prevented him from being informed.

Additionally, new Right to Know documents obtained by this outlet show that within a week of the allegations first surfacing, both Shapiro’s chief of staff Dana Fritz and chief legal counsel Jennifer Selber knew of the allegations. That finding undercuts Shapiro’s public defense in which he specifically invoked these “two strong women” as trusted leaders the public could count on to handle sexual misconduct issues.

The core of the scandal dates to the first weeks of the administration in 2023. Shapiro appointed his long-trusted aide, Mike Vereb, to the key cabinet position of secretary of legislative affairs — a post that handles the give-and-take between the governor and the legislative branch, and crucially, heads up budget negotiations.

In March, a female deputy in Vereb’s office quit, alleging a series of small bits of improper sexual discussion in the office built to a crescendo until Vereb made an extremely crude proposition to her. She then claimed that once she raised the issue to others, Vereb and some of his colleagues began to question her job performance as a pretext.

The deputy quit on March 7 or 8, but Vereb, who was never suspended at any point, didn’t resign until September 27, 2023. Weeks later, multiple media outlets reported the complaint had been settled out of court for $295,000 in taxpayer dollars, with both parties under non-disclosure agreements.

Last summer, as Shapiro was in the “veepstakes” possibly to be a vice presidential candidate, his spokesman told the New York Times that the governor didn’t know of the allegations against his top aide for many months — an idea Democrats ignored but Republicans sharply criticized.

When pressed on this issue by Philadelphia Magazine last month, Shapiro invoked the human resources defense.

“Well, it wasn’t brought to my attention because our policy didn’t require it to be, because our policy required this HR process to be conducted and then a determination to be made,” he told reporter Tom McGrath. “I think as a result of that, I spent time thinking about, okay, well, how could we make our system better, and should I have known about it?” 

McGrath went on to note that Shapiro said the process was changed so that he could be informed sooner, should similar circumstances arise.

With this answer in mind, Broad + Liberty asked the administration to voluntarily provide copies of the HR policies: the previous version that prevented his knowing, and the amended version that would now allow for immediate access to the top.

Even though it was given more than a week to respond, the administration did not furnish any such documentation. This outlet already has a Right to Know request pending on the matter. The only comment spokesperson Manuel Bonder made that would appear to touch on this issue was to reiterate a line the administration has used several times already.

“Having learned from this experience, in the future, the Governor will be immediately informed of any complaint of this sort.”

It’s important to remember that at the time Shapiro was offering the “two strong women” defense, the public did not know when the settlement was reached, meaning the accountability timeline wasn’t very clear. Also, Shapiro had yet to invoke the idea that he wasn’t told early on.

“Two women — strong women”

When Gov. Shapiro first made public remarks about the Vereb affair, roughly one week after it first broke into public view, he gave a straightforward explanation as to why people could feel confident in his administration’s ability to handle issues of workplace sexual harassment.

“I can tell you the individual [Vereb] you cited in your question no longer works in my administration. I’ll also tell you — and I want to just speak generally on this, not with regards to any specifics here, and I appreciate your understanding of why I can’t comment individually — our administration is led by two women, strong women, my chief of staff and general counsel. And we work every day to make sure that we have a healthy, safe, professional work environment for all of our employees,” (video, minute 37:30).

Shapiro was referring to Dana Fritz, the governor’s chief of staff, and Jennifer Selber, his top attorney who leads his office of general counsel. At the same press event, Democrat state Senator Lisa Boscola reiterated the idea.

“As a female state senator, we were able to sit and meet with Governor Shapiro and his team yesterday,” Boscola said on Oct. 5, 2023. “We came out of that very confident that he’s handling this, his administration — and he’s right, he has two powerful women that know what they’re doing when they come to personnel issues.”

But Boscola’s shine on the meeting doesn’t mesh with public reports.

“Some [of the female senators] left the hour-long, closed-door meeting visibly frustrated, and one senator later said she still had ‘unanswered questions,’” an Inquirer article noted.

Through the Right to Know law, Broad + Liberty can identify an email between Fritz and Selber that, given the wording of the request, would certainly have to deal with Vereb and the accuser’s allegations.

Broad + Liberty does not have possession of the email because it is still being contested in a Right to Know appeal at the Office of Open Records. 

Nevertheless, as the above image shows, the governor’s office identified the email between Fritz and Selber on March 14, 2023. Shapiro’s two strong women had a clear understanding of the issue one week after the accuser left, yet Vereb was never suspended at any time during the investigation, or even fired at a time when the office was negotiating a six-figure payout. (Click the image for larger view.)

Even the idea that Shapiro didn’t know until later doesn’t explain the sequence of events and the decision-making process of Fritz and Selber. 

As Bonder has explained it, Shapiro supposedly first knew of the allegations about the time the office was negotiating a settlement — that would be either July or August 2023. Yet Vereb didn’t leave until the last days of September, and the governor’s office has refused to answer the question why he was able to stay on for at least a month after Shapiro supposedly was informed. The same logic would apply equally to Fritz and Selber as well.

Shapiro’s spokesman didn’t refute the notion that the email showed Shapiro’s top-two women leaders were in the loop early on.

“It is the responsibility of the leadership of the Governor’s office to responsibly and legally adhere to personnel policies and procedures to ensure all complaints are fully investigated for legitimacy, employees and former employees’ rights and privacy are protected, and that everyone feels safe in their workplace,” Bonder said. “That is the standard our leadership followed in this instance and we stand by their decision making based on the circumstances of this case, which we unfortunately cannot share publicly due to our legal responsibility to protect the complainant’s privacy.”

Bonder then pointed the finger elsewhere.

“While others have leaked and shared that confidential information, we will not do so.”

State Rep. Abby Major, a Republican representing parts of Westmoreland and Armstrong counties, said the latest story from the Shapiro administration is the continuation of a trend, in her mind.

“Every time the Governor’s office is asked a question about this there is a new excuse. This latest one centers around protecting his employees and protecting the victim, but I’m not buying it,” Major said. “This whole debacle has shown that no one bothered to protect her when she was an employee and had a legitimate, credible sexual harassment complaint against her direct supervisor. I didn’t realize protecting employees meant writing a check and making her sign a non-disclosure agreement.”

Major has been a constant voice in the Vereb affair, given that she came forward in March of 2023 with her own story of sexual harassment by a fellow lawmaker. Her experience and story also set the circumstances in which she befriended the accuser after she left government.

But Major’s history is telling in another way.

She was one of the sources that allowed this outlet to name then-state Rep. Mike Zabel as the person who had been mentioned — anonymously — by an SEIU lobbyist as the lawmaker she alleges groped her at a one-on-one policy discussion. 

The Zabel affair and its cautionary lesson was the eye of the hurricane in Harrisburg at the exact moment that Vereb’s accuser was fleeing the office. Spotlight PA reported on March 13, 2023 that “Pennsylvania House Democrats for the first time have acknowledged that the caucus knew about a sexual harassment allegation against state Rep. Mike Zabel (D., Delaware) in 2019, several years before similar claims became public, leading the lawmaker to announce his resignation.”

That explosive revelation came just one day before Fritz and Selber were clearly brought in the loop on the Vereb accusations.

The National Women’s Defense League, which has closely tracked the Vereb matter as part of its watchdog role of sexual harassment in the political workplace, said the administration needs to increase the communication and transparency.

“The failure to adequately address sexual harassment in state legislatures across the country is unacceptable and something we have seen time and again in Harrisburg. Governor Shapiro’s report of an internal policy change back in June is a step in the right direction but in light of the harm done and expense to tax payers, the public deserves to know what policies are in place to better protect public servants and the public,” said Sarah Higginbotham, director and co-founder of the NWDL. 

“Moreover, policies should be codified in state statute to ensure the best protection and reduce political bias. Survivors’ privacy must always be protected, but the policies and procedures governing these complaints should be transparent, consistent, and public,” she added.

“Pennsylvania’s elected officials should be leading on anti-harassment policies and transparency. Governor Shapiro and the legislature should pass meaningful, survivor-centered legislation that brings long-overdue accountability and transparency to every statehouse office. The people of Pennsylvania deserve a government where misconduct is addressed and survivors are supported — not silenced.”

Questions

There are many questions the governor’s office has not or will not answer, most of which do not appear to violate the nondisclosure agreement.

If an HR policy prevented the governor from finding out about allegations against his top aide, can you please show the public the exact language in the exact policy that created this circumstance?

Did the administration ever consider suspending Vereb?

If the HR policy required — in Shapiro’s own words — for ‘a determination to be made’ before he could be informed, what was that determination, when was it made, and who made it?

If Gov. Shapiro found out about the Vereb issue in July or August when settlement negotiations were underway, why was Vereb’s resignation so much later, on September 27?

Because of a court case in which Broad + Liberty is seeking more emails related to this matter, it has been established that the accuser’s email account and all its contents were deleted sometime within the first year after her departure. When exactly did that account deletion happen?

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As attorney general, Josh Shapiro earned well deserved recognition for his prosecution of sex crimes within the archdiocese of the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania. During that time, he routinely called on the powerful to set aside their self-interests in order to care for victims.

“We have to stand up and say that we’re going to put people before powerful institutions, that we are not going to let – whether it’s the church, or some university, or Hollywood, or politics or business community – ever put their particular interests above the needs of those that they are supposed to represent and care for,” Shapiro said.

Todd Shepherd is Broad + Liberty’s chief investigative reporter. Send him tips at tshepherd@broadandliberty.com, or use his encrypted email at shepherdreports@protonmail.com. @shepherdreports