Campaigners are outraged a disgraced councillor has been allowed to hold on to a senior post.
Jackie Burns was branded “every woman’s nightmare” and banned from using public transport after pestering a passenger.
It followed a similar conviction four years earlier involving a teenager.
Burns, 57, refused to resign as an Independent member of South Lanarkshire Council.
Last week, he chaired a meeting of the authority’s petitions committee dealing with road safety.
Councillors have the power to withdraw licences from taxi drivers, stallholders and others convicted of criminal offences.
Rape Crisis Scotland director Sandie Barton said: “It shouldn’t be the case that someone who has exhibited this kind of unacceptable behaviour that relates directly to women’s sense of safety is able to continue as a councillor and is, in effect, untouchable.”
Burns, a former deputy leader of the council, was found guilty of breach of the peace at Hamilton Sheriff Court in July.
He made a grab for a 39-year-old woman alone on a bus at night.
The victim said she was “terrified” after Burns kept staring then grabbed her.
Burns was cleared of sexually assaulting the woman by touching her breast and trying to kiss her.
But Sheriff Ray Small told him: “You were what might traditionally be called a nuisance drunk.
“It’s everyone’s nightmare, particularly a woman’s in the present climate, when the only other passenger on the bus touches her uninvited.”
Sheriff Small fined Burns £270 and ordered him to pay the woman £400.
He was banned from public transport for two years.
Despite the convictions Burns, of Larkhall, intends to stand again in May. When approached for comment, he put the phone down.
