Rep. Lyman responds to investigation that found ‘unprofessional’ but not illegal conduct – Deseret News

A private company launched an investigation into the conduct of Republican Rep. Phil Lyman of Blanding after state officials allegedly testified that he imitated female employees, called coworkers “idiots” and used the F-word during a Jan. 25 meeting.

In an interview with Deseret News, Lyman, a gubernatorial candidate, denied the allegations in the report.

“There was no shouting. I didn’t call anyone an idiot,” Lyman said. He also said he didn’t use the slur toward employees – he said he was referring to the deal.

The investigation found that Lyman did not violate any laws or policies of the Utah Legislature. The firm also concluded that Lyman’s conduct was “unprofessional and inappropriate” and said that because it appeared to be an “isolated incident,” the conduct could not be classified as creating an abusive work environment.

“I have concluded that neither woman welcomed Rep. Lyman’s conduct and both women felt subjectively offended,” the report states. “However, I have also concluded that Rep. Lyman’s conduct was not severe enough to create an abusive work environment – he merely parroted their words in a derisive manner.”

The Deseret News obtained the documents through a speaker of the Utah House of Representatives.

“Earlier this year, we were presented with a complaint against one of our representatives. We followed all processes and procedures to resolve the matter in a timely, professional and fair manner, including engaging outside counsel to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation,” Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz said in a statement. “The investigation found that while the member acted unprofessionally, no federal, state or statutory regulations were violated.”

The firm did not interview Lyman during the investigation. “This is because after my interview with (redacted), (redacted) and (redacted), and in response to a question from Speaker Mike Schultz, I believed it was unlikely that anything Rep. Lyman might say in an interview would change my answers to the above questions. Accordingly, Speaker Schultz directed me to prepare my report without speaking with Rep. Lyman,” the report states.

Lyman said when he spoke with Schultz, R-Hooper, the House speaker told him the investigation was complete and “they found no wrongdoing, nothing illegal, nothing unethical and there was no need for action. He said it was probably in my best interest to just let it go.”

The report concerned a meeting with staff from the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration held in Lyman’s office. The group had met to discuss a budget memo to accompany a bill that would prohibit state employees from receiving bonuses for overseeing the sale of trust lands and would limit legislative powers.

According to the report, Lyman said the agency’s employees were “either ‘idiots’ or they were ‘duped by the Red Rock Wilderness conspiracy.'” Lyman called the agency a “failure” and said he would try to disband it, but did not trust the state legislature to take responsibility.

The discussion reportedly veered off the financial report when a staffer said they needed to “mutually disagree.” The report says Lyman repeated the phrase “in a high-pitched voice while gesturing with his hands and tilting his head so that it was clear to both (redacted) and (redacted) that Rep. Lyman was making fun of (redacted) because of her gender.”

Another participant in the meeting said he was working during the discussion, but he “vaguely” remembered Lyman using a derisive tone. As the group discussed the land swap at Bears Ears, Lyman reportedly said something along the lines of, “You’re swapping the damn lands.”

Lyman said he “used the F-word in the deal that’s being made,” adding, “And that seems to be the right adjective for this type of deal where all the land is taken away from one county and distributed to other counties.”

“I didn’t stutter. I didn’t shout. It wasn’t yelling, as far as I heard,” Lyman said. “I was very clear and I think I brought to their attention the seriousness of what they were trying to do to the honest people who were negatively affected by this.”

The employees then began to leave Lyman’s office. The report then said Lyman said state employees would receive a commission based on land sales, and one of the employees denied that this had happened. Lyman was said to have “mimicking what (redacted) had just said, using a high-pitched voice and gesturing with his hands.”

In response to the accusations of ridicule, Lyman said he did not care about her gender.

“It’s not two female employees. It’s two SITLA employees,” Lyman said. “I don’t care what gender they were. It’s a really sensitive issue when you take away a county’s productive assets, and I don’t care if they’re female or male SITLA employees.”

The report states that the employees left the office and Lyman said, “I’m not finished with you yet.” Two of the employees wrote a report about the meeting that same day. The investigator interviewed those two employees and a third who was present.

“He stated that while he agreed with many of the policy positions expressed by Rep. Lyman during the meeting, he found his conduct to be inappropriate, unprofessional and unproductive,” the report said. He also expressed concern that other meetings with Lyman had been similar, although he had never experienced such behavior from Lyman before.

At another meeting attended by Lyman, Governor Spencer Cox, Representative John Curtis and Senator Mike Lee, a state official present said Lyman called the Bears Ears land swap a “gang rape.”

“After the meeting, Senator Lee said Representative Lyman was ‘pretty awful – and that’s coming from me,'” the report said.

The report concluded that it was unlikely that Lyman violated any local, state or federal laws, saying, “There is no evidence that Representative Lyman engaged in harassing conduct based on a protected characteristic on any occasion other than during the January 25 meeting.”

The question of whether Lyman’s conduct violated a policy of the Utah Legislature was answered during the investigation by saying that it was likely not a policy violation.

“Although Rep. Lyman’s conduct most likely constituted unwelcome harassment based on sex, it was not severe or pervasive enough to constitute a violation of federal or state law – and, consequently, policy.”

Lyman called the report an “abort report” and said the report found no illegal conduct on his part. He also said the report lacked context for discussing Bears Ears National Monument and the Red Rock Wilderness Act.

The report concluded that Lyman had not violated any laws or policies, but described his conduct as unprofessional and inappropriate.