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The City Council's Standards and Ethics Committee will not submit its resolution requiring member Ydanis Rodriguez to attend an employee relations course if he completes it voluntarily.
Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez is giving up the fight against allegations that he poked a female Council staffer in the chest after an argument. The fiery representative from the 10th district is taking an employee relations course and giving up his seat as the chair of the Higher Education Committee until the course is over.
“Since our August 4th meeting Council Member Rodriguez has indicated that he is willing to accept the terms of the committee’s recommendation,” said Ethics Chair Inez Dickens at a hearing on Wed., Aug. 25.
The Committee of Ethics and Standards determined that Rodriguez should take the class after an 8-hour, closed-door hearing on Aug. 4 found that he inappropriately poked the staffer in anger on June 25 during an argument over Rodriguez being left out of a decision over CUNY’s budget.
Rodriguez packed the hearing room on Aug. 4 with supporters who wore white tape across their mouths in protest, and called two “emergency meetings” in his district to rail against the accusations against him. At the Aug. 6 “emergency meeting” Rodriguez told supporters he would only take the class if it were held in his district and if 100 community members were allowed to take it with him.
However Dickens said Rodriguez sent her a letter just under a week later, on Aug. 12, indicating that he would take the course and stop fighting the committee’s recommendation without qualification.
Dickens read the letter during the hearing:
“I agree to accept the terms of the committee’s recommendation and will start an employee relations program on Monday, August 16, 2010 and ending no later than September 30, 2010. As a part of this agreement I understand that I will not be serving as chairperson of the Higher Education Committee until I successfully complete this program. In addition, I will withdraw, or will cause to be withdrawn any pending lawsuits against the committee and or the committee chairperson relating to the committee’s investigation into this matter.”
The committee decided to not submit its recommendation to the Council at its Stated Meeting, which followed the hearing, and would not if Rodriguez finished the course without incident.
“It doesn’t have to,” Dickens said of the decision to not submit the resolution to the Council. “As long as [the course is] complete.”
A spokesperson for Rodriguez said that he had no comment, but that the Council member still denies he did anything wrong, that he was anxious to move past the matter and continue with his agenda.
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