I knew this was going to happen. Councilors Brekke and Starr voted against it.
To say it was a total 4 1/2 hour sh*t show is an understatement. Greg continued to say it was a political hit job but when questioned about that political hit job to show evidence all he could do is shuffle papers and look down at his feet.
At one point he pretended to not know what ALEC does (you know the shadow right wing group funded by the Koch Brothers who supported this conference). It would be like asking me what the ACLU does and not being able to answer it. It was laughable at best.
I also thought it was funny how Greg was answering the RS5’s questions before they finished asking the questions. Can you say rehearsal?
Even though the complaintant John Cunningham wasn’t provided around a 170 pages of evidence before the hearing he did a fine job of answering questions, and he beat down this was a political hit job. John said it best, “I’m concerned about ethics not politics.”
During my public input I told them right off the bat that I knew they would dismiss so I would go into the huff and puff of the meeting.
• I pointed out the clear conflict of interest and the bias the Mayor had tonight chairing the meeting since he attended the event with Greg. (I did not mention this in testimony, but Greg revealed tonight the former Deputy COS to the mayor TJ Nelson also attended the event with them. Guess who Nelson works for now? Greg’s counsel, Redstone. Hmmmmmmm.)
• I added that it was a partisan event because only Republicans were invited to attend.
• I said Greg didn’t bother to tell the council until he was at the event, I said, “It would be like calling my mom and telling her I was thinking about taking a vacation in Hawaii and when she asked me when, I would respond, I’m here now.” (My mother has a strict policy with me that I tell her in advance before I take long trips).
• Greg has yet to give the council or public a report of what he learned, though he was a chatterbox about it tonight, we still don’t know.
• I also took issue with the term ‘Common Practice’ and that the BOE failed in their duties to point this out but present NO evidence (Even Councilor Soehl brought this up in the final testimony). I said the only other person I can think of in the past 20 years that does this quite frequently is the current mayor.
• I went on to remind them that a city councilor’s email not flagged confidential by the city attorney because of pending litigation is a PUBLIC DOCUMENT and owned by the taxpayers (they tried to claim Starr leaked this document) I also said the same about Brekke pointing out chapters in the charter to citizens. I compared it to John Cunningham asking assistance from a city librarian to find a law book.
• I ended by saying this could have saved everyone a lot of time, capital and heartache if Neitzert would have not made this confidential and just apologized for what he did and reference that the code is vague. That would have proven he has real ethics and integrity, since he said several times during his testimony he ‘did nothing wrong’. Well then why hide behind confidentiality?
Lastly, I just want to say I agreed with Councilor Kiley’s final statement on this tonight, “This whole thing was disgusting.” It sure was. It sure was. It was a classic switcharoo of killing the messenger. And that was disgusting. Greg violated the ordinance and got off. That is disgusting Ricky and you enabled it.