I guess David couldn’t find any case law that applied.
I am writing this from memory since I did not take many notes about the ethics hearing today (video to come soon). The ethics hearing was held today in the old council chambers at city hall at 2:30 and lasted for two hours.
Bruce Danielson filed three ethics violations, one dealing with the conflict of interest with the chair of the commission, and two referring to the mayor’s violation of city ordinance in doing the state of the city address before the election as a campaign event.
It started with the chair (retired CPA Greg LaFollette) having a conflict in the previous ruling (he didn’t recuse himself from the last ethics proceedings) because Bruce’s family business had an accounting contract with the chair and it ended with Greg making a bad decision (according to the IRS) and costing the company around $100,000. They terminated his contract because of it, and Greg refused to help them resolve the issue or even talk to them about the mistake.
The chair ‘claimed’ that he did not recall Bruce or his family’s business, to which Bruce responded by saying it was disheartening that the chair had memory loss and because of these memory issues, he probably shouldn’t be chairing the commission (it was one of Greg’s biggest clients at the time, early 1980’s) and the mistake was detrimental to the company and cost them a lot of money, to which the chair didn’t remember any of it, at the beginning of the hearing anyway, but then suddenly had memory relapse.
Bruce said,
“If the Chairman of the Ethics board has that kind of a memory problem than we really have a real problem with the whole ethics system within this city.â€
Knudtson: “Clearly you have bad feelingsâ€
Not bad feelings toward LaFollette personally, but Distress? Yes there may be a feeling of distress because the system is constantly stacked against the average person from trying to work in system.
Greg responded by saying the accusations were lies and slanderous, which I found to be an odd indictment since just minutes before, he said he couldn’t remember Bruce being a client but all of sudden recalled the incident enough to accuse Bruce of lying. I guess the IRS would be the only one to know the real answer. Even if the chair was not at fault or disagreed with the IRS’s evaluation of the incident, wouldn’t a CPA remember this? Even if it was 30 years ago? Seems pretty significant, costing a client $100K in taxes and getting your contract pulled.
I also wondered why the chair chose to ‘wave confidentiality’ and have this hearing in public (instead of executive session) before the hearing started knowing that his character and previous business dealings with Bruce? It’s one thing to accuse Bruce of ‘character assassination’ during the proceedings, but the chair had the option of having it behind closed doors. It’s as he was looking for the pity vote because Bruce (well really the IRS) were picking on him.
But it’s gets better, besides the Ronald Reagan moment by the chair, not recalling, then recalling when his butt was on the line, the commission felt that he did nothing wrong, and then the chair not only did not recuse himself from the remaining proceedings, he still felt he had no conflicts.
Even if he felt he did nothing wrong, he still should have recused himself based on the two doing business together. Even if the experience was positive, there is still a conflict.
And in a very strange twist, but expected, the city attorney recuses himself from advising the commission and decides he is the mayor’s defense attorney (the mayor did not appear, apparently he is too busy for these proceedings, according to the city attorney, yet Mike has time to visit every radio station in town to do interviews and does a press conference every time he passes gas.)
So instead of the city attorney defending the charter and giving legal advice to the commission members (his real job at these proceedings), he defends the mayor, and goes as far as accusing Bruce of harassing a public official with frivolous complaints.
This did not sit well with me.
As I have stated before, elected officials have to listen to grievance whether they like it or not, part of job of being elected and compensated to represent the public. When I look at a harassment charge being thrown against a citizen in reference to an elected official, my first assumption would be a physical or verbal threat against the official, which is intolerable IMO, but questioning an official’s ethical practices in reference to city ordinance? Hardly harassment, more like due diligence and healthy for a democracy.
The commission didn’t feel the state of the city address was in violation of election ordinances, at one point the city attorney even quoted ‘Wikipedia’ by saying state addresses are supposed to be exuberant. Whatever that means.
I testified that it wasn’t just the meeting itself (which I contested as a graphic designer for 20 years was loaded with language that was meant to ‘sell’) I said that the timing of the address proves it was a campaign stump speech, since Huether in his previous 3 years NEVER did his state address that early and suddenly decided to move this address up before the election.
The commission countered that it may have been done because of scheduling issues. (that’s a good argument, if he would have scheduled it later instead of earlier then previous years) I responded by saying that it would be nice if the mayor was in attendance to verify that, but he wasn’t, so we would never know, I even went as far as saying that it was so blatantly obvious it was done to make it into a campaign event that I want to beat my head against the wall when I see the commission having no issue with the ethics of the meeting move.
Throughout the hearing, commission members consistently were interrupting and making excuses for the mayor (they are appointed by him). This is a point of order, because they should not be arguing their case until a motion has been made to vote on the violation. It was clear they were countering us and had made up their minds that the mayor was innocent and their decision was made in advance before listening to testimony. They were not listening to the facts laid out before them, that the meeting and the city finance yearly report being bumped up was clear motive to having this address before the election to use it as a quasi-campaign event.
As for the city attorney’s statement about ‘harassing’ elected officials, I reminded the city attorney during my testimony that it is citizen’s constitutional right to share grievances with elected officials, and it just didn’t seem right that he was accusing citizens of harassing an elected official when all they were doing is practicing their 1st amendment rights, and he should know better. But apparently the defense of mayor Huether includes ignoring citizens constitutional rights.
Former Central District candidate, State Senator and daughter of SD Supreme Court Chief Justice, Rebecca Dunn also echoed my concerns, she was a little more upset about it, she went as far as even asking what recourse do citizens have if they are being accused of frivolousness and harassment by the very city attorney who represents the ethics commission? She further said as I did, that it was our right to question the ethics of elected officials. If anything, I would say the mayor’s unethical treatment of the city charter was a form of harassment of law abiding citizens of this town, but apparently we no longer have recourse to address these violations.
Of course, as expected, the commission threw out the complaints saying they were bias and frivolous. I guess in this town, it is perfectly acceptable to use tax dollars to campaign with as long as you can get away with lying about your true intentions. Something the city attorney and ethics commission did very well today.
This is NOT over.