Pueblo City Councilor Lori Winner intends to sue city over handling of harassment complaint
Pueblo City Councilor Lori Winner is planning to sue the City of Pueblo over the way it handled her harassment complaint against City Attorney Dan Kogovsek, officials and the public were told at a city council meeting Monday.
Winner's attorney announced the intention to file a lawsuit as the board considered a resolution that would authorize the City of Pueblo's human resources department to hire outside legal counsel to investigate Winner's allegations against Kogovsek.
Winner claims the city attorney acted in a threatening manner toward her during an Oct. 28 executive session meeting.
In a police report, filed Dec. 28, she said Kogovsek "hovered over me, shook his finger 6 inches from my face, voice raised, in a threatening manner, verbalizing anger and showing physical signs of anger" when she questioned whether both he and Gradisar should attend the October meeting, where an ethics complaint against Gradisar was discussed.
The city planned to retain a Boulder attorney to investigate Winner's allegations but last Friday, Mayor Nick Gradisar said a Colorado Springs attorney representing Winner had served notice that she intends to sue the city and Kogovsek.
"In view of the pending litigation, any further investigation should be made in that forum and anything that we do outside of that litigation, in my judgement, would be a waste of time and money," Gradisar said at Monday's meeting.
"If Councilor Winner decides to proceed with claims against the City of Pueblo and City Attorney Dan Kogovsek, the claim will be reviewed and processed through the Colorado Intergovernmental Risk Sharing Agency (CIRSA)," the mayor's office said in a statement sent to The Chieftain Tuesday.
More: Pueblo City Council to seek outside counsel to determine if mayor violated code of ethics
"The City of Pueblo and all employees involved in the claim will assist with any follow-up or information requested to address the claim."
The city will have to hire an attorney to defend against Winner's complaint, which means it would not be in a position to hire another lawyer to investigate the same claim, assistant city attorney Robert Jagger said.
"I did exactly what the Mayor told me to do, twice," Winner told The Chieftain, referring to Gradisar's suggestions during public discussions that the complaint against Kogovsek should be dropped and she should file a civil suit.
More: 'This is politics': Gradisar responds to complaint against city attorney
"Nick seems to think that, if it's a civil suit, it's me personally suing Dan personally," she said. "I'm not even an attorney and I know that this is suing the city because Dan did this at work.
"Nick sat there and told me to sue the city. He said, 'I'm not going to do anything, get an attorney,' so that's what I was forced to do."
District 1 Councilor Regina Maestri has questioned the handling of Winner's complaint at public meetings since it was first introduced.
'It seems like the community is pretty upset'
In response to public comments suggesting the matter be handled privately, Maestri said: "It seems like the community is pretty upset that we have a councilor that has suffered what she feels is a form of abuse and all of the sudden the taxpayers want to wipe their hands of it and let her figure it out for herself."
"Let's have some respect and let's not treat this like it's somebody else's problem," she said.
Maestri suggested that Gradisar overstepped his role as mayor when he took Winner's complaint away from human resources and dismissed it.
"I don't know why you keep intervening in all of these things," she told him during the meeting. "This has brought liability to the city because, under your recommendation she seek outside counsel, now we're facing a lawsuit."
"You want to talk about a loss to the community? We could have handled this through HR, it could have been properly handled through HR but now we're facing a lawsuit," Maestri said, directing her comments to the public.
"So if you want to put some blame somewhere, before you get up here and talk about Councilor Winner, I don't know if you think its a personal problem for her but it happened here in this room. It is a community problem that we all have to face and we all have to take care of."
Don't make taxpayers pay, Puebloans say
Two community members who spoke at the meeting said they did not want taxpayers to foot any of the bill for the lawsuit.
Taxpayers should not have to pay for the city to hire a human resources investigator, either, or pay legal fees related to the city's involvement in a lawsuit, they said.
One of the community members told The Chieftain in a phone call on Tuesday that she felt Gradisar had "dropped the ball on this."
"I feel like he needs to be held accountable for handling (Winner's complaint against Kogovsek) so negligently," she said, asking that her name be withheld "It should have gone through the course of procedures that they have in place and, if at that point it's not satisfactory to her, then it’s up to her to go further with it — but not at taxpayers’ expense."
The cost of any litigation would be determined by CIRSA upon receipt of the claim, along with an estimated timeline for the lawsuit, a spokesperson for the mayor's office said.
It was unclear how much of the cost of a lawsuit Pueblo's taxpayers would have to pick up. Winner said she already has nearly $3,000 in legal fees, although she did not go into detail.
Contact Chieftain reporter Lacey Latch at llatch@gannett.com or on social media @laceylatch.
This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Pueblo City Councilor Lori Winner intends to sue city
