Jan 06, 2025 Board of Ethics on 2025-01-06 5:30 PM (Special Called Meeting)

Welcome to this special call meeting of the Benton Board of Ethics. It's January 6th, 2025, 531 P.M. And I call the meeting to order. There's three members here and we'll elect a presiding officer first. What do you want me to do? I'll move to elect Diane as the presiding officer. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I do appreciate that. I'll move to make Kenneth Ferguson the presiding officer. And I second that motion. I think you have to vote. I think you can say if there's no objection, then Kenneth Ferguson will serve as the chair. Okay. Let's call item number BOE 25-001. And this is an ethics complaint number 25-003, filed on December 24, 2024, concerning allegations of the ethics ordinance, section 2-273. And so as part of the process, the complaint gets submitted to me. I determine if basically the form is filled out correctly, according to the chair who assigns the panel. That's where we are currently, so you as the panel now determine if the complaint is actionable, baseless, or if there's an option to recommend the hearing preferability. I'll pull up the definitions of what those mean, but that's the extent of what we're doing today. Any questions about that? This section of the ordinance has the information on what actionable and baseless means. I can zoom in. I'm having a little trouble hearing you from over here. Okay. So this meeting is just to determine if the complaint is actionable or baseless, which is defined on the slide. Does that make sense? Got it. Can we talk now? Yes, you can talk. Well, I did read it all, and I did read the ethics complaint form, and something struck out at me unwarding. And it said possible violation, which gave me great grief to wonder if there was a true violation or not. Me personally, after reading this and understanding all this and reading all that, I do not think there was intent here. I do not know the person, but I do think that -- I do not believe that there was intent to break the rules. And the biggest thing for me was there was not enough information. It is the mayor's job to give me and them as much information as we can. And I was like, well, when did this happen? When did the roof get on? How much did the roof get on? Were they getting the same deal as everybody else in the community? And I just do not think there is enough information for me to make that decision based on this. So I just do not think we should go forward on it, because they did not fulfill their responsibility. They did not fulfill his responsibility to this committee to make sure they got all they needed before they made their decision. Unless there is some other information out there I do not know about. I think the only other information was the video, the link to the video, which -- there was a link to the work session video, which I think that was the only other thing provided apart from the pictures of this. You know, council people are human beings, and I understand what ethics is. I have worked in it a long time, but they are human beings. And sometimes they get an advantage -- they are not getting an advantage, but they get a discount, just like everybody else gets a discount. And I do not think we should beat up council people to not allow them to have a life because they are council people. There is no wonder nobody wants to ruin. I just do not believe that this warrants us going forward. I tend to agree. I want to clarify. This specifically is about Section E, the improper influence, correct? Correct. So it shall be a violation of this article for a city official to use such person's official title and position to secure privileges, special privileges, or benefits for such person or others. I would say that the deliberations was meant to get, if you want to call it, a benefit or a privilege for an entire section of the city, population or residents, and not just one person. That is where I want to go back to what we talked about before, that I do not think that the person got any special privileges through this, because it is hoped that those rates would go toward everybody that has the same things. I do not agree with you. I do not think that you should go forward with it. It further states in Section E that those benefits go beyond that which is normally available to every other citizen. Now, obviously, it is not available to every citizen, because it is a subsection of citizens who have the same setup, but every citizen has the opportunity and the choice to get solar panels on their roof as well. That is where I totally agree with you. I mean, they have the right, as any other citizen, to receive what any other citizen would have an advantage in that. So, I see nothing there that shows me, personally, that this is some kind of a violation. I just do not think it is intent. I use that word, but when you talk about ethics, you have got to have an intent of doing something wrong. I think we have a piece of paper here that says, "Possible Violation." Well, they do not even know if it is a violation. So, I am going to agree totally with you that they have the right to have the same rights of other people about what happens, their discounts and whatever, as long as the other people. They cannot have special treatment. They cannot get special pricing. We all know that under the rules, but I just do not see this happening. I think that I tend to agree that it is not baseless and not going to be actionable, but I would like to just kind of come out and defend a little bit of our complainants here and that we are mandated to make these complaints. And so, I do not think that we are faced with a malice complaint, or I do not like the word "baseless," but a complaint that was made in bad faith. I think this complaint was made by mandate to say, "Hey, is this possible?" I do not know. It is possible. This is what happened. Go watch the video. See for yourself. You all decide. That is your job. You are the Board of Ethics. So, I do want to thank the Mayor for taking the time to write this out and present it to us and run it through the proper process, as we, as city officials, are mandated to do under Section 272. But yeah, I do tend to agree that it is not actionable. The Mayor did what he had to do. He wrote up a complaint based on what it says he has to report. Obviously, there is nothing to be taken. I would rather something be reported than not. You know, I would rather fight in the butt right away than have it grow. Based on all the information, I think we are together on this. So, I want to make a motion. I'll make a motion that we move to that this is not an actionable complaint. Second? I'm sorry. We have a second from Diane. Okay. With that, the motion passes. And this is a baseless complaint. Well, I think the motion was not actionable. And then... I did repeat it differently. You are correct. So the baseless is something you could consider now if you wanted to. I'm sorry. So the action was that it was not actionable? Not actionable, yeah. Okay. Do we have a motion as to whether this is a baseless complaint or not? I think the next step is frivolity. Because you find either actionable or baseless. And then the next step is... I think once you find it's not actionable, you can't determine frivolity. You would do that rest. So it's not actionable, but that doesn't mean it's baseless? Should we determine it's baseless? Or should we make a motion about that? If it's not actionable, there's no movement on it, right? Correct? Yeah. I think not actionable and baseless are one and the same thing. Yes. Based on that language, I would agree. If it's not actionable, therefore it's baseless, right? Yeah. So now we need to decide if it's going to be...if it was... Frivolous? It's frivolous. Now, is that a separate committee that determines the frivolity or is that on us? You can determine if the full board should determine if it was frivolous or just let it go. Okay, yes. It goes to the full board. Right. If you wanted to have a hearing on frivolity, that would go to the full board. Or you could just say it's baseless and that's it. I'd like to move to say that it is baseless and that it dies here. You're moving it as baseless? Yes. I would second that. Okay. Can I ask a quick question before we move on with frivolity? I would like to find out...can we discuss previous complaints related to this? If you're discussing frivolity, you can discuss things outside of the complaint. So yes. Okay. And then I can scroll down to the frivolity part of this. These are the... So when you... Well, we have a motion. Yeah, there's still a motion for baseless on the board. And we have a second, so now we need to call a vote. So all opposed? Well, I think we have to vote then, right? Then we would have to vote. You have a motion. I second that we have to open to voting. I'm a little concerned because we didn't really discuss the frivolity. The what? We did not really discuss if there was frivolity or not. We just moved ahead with the motion. So can we lay the motion on the table? I am not a certified parliamentarian. So I think it says before filing notification of your determination. So if you decided it's not actionable, your motion is now to also determine whether it's baseless or not. If it's...you determine it's baseless, then I believe you move to the frivolity, don't you? Are there other procedures? Oh yes, Rich. It says clearly out there, baseless complaint shall be dismissed. Well, it says if the panel determines the complaint is not actionable, does not recommend a frivolity hearing the complaint is baseless and is dismissed. So I don't know if you have to make a separate determination on baseless. If you made the determination on not actionable, the next determination is to whether the allegations will not constitute a violation and should be dismissed for whether you want to recommend a frivolity hearing. So the choice is, do you want to recommend that it's frivolous? But wouldn't you have a hearing on that? In order to determine it was frivolous, they would recommend that we have a hearing to do that. Yes. So they wouldn't determine that it was, just that... They would move forward to the whole forward. But this was based on this complaint, not complaints of the past. That's why I asked if that can be discussed as part of the... I think you just look at this particular... Okay, then that's it. Then I will go with that. Then I will go along with the motion. I don't have an issue with it. Okay. I'm dismissing it. All voting... All votes in the affirmative, say aye. What did you say? All in the affirmative, say aye. Aye. Okay, with that, the motion passes unanimously. I think that we're done. I promise I will pick this stuff up, guys. I will learn it. I just want to check without a yeah. Yeah, I think that they determined it's not actionable. They don't recommend the frivolity hearing the complaints baseless, because they made a motion that it was baseless. And it's dispensed under number eight of the ethics complaint preliminary assessment process. So then we'll just close the meeting at the time. That concludes the meeting at 5.49 p.m. And we're adjourned. And we're adjourned.