Ethics Board Takes Pass on French

The City Ethics Board has cleared Mayor Doug French of any impropriety or inappropiate behavior. According to the minutes of its February 2 session, board members interviewed assessor Noreen Whitty and building inspector Maureen Eckman during a 90-minute executive session. 

After the minutes were released, Mayor French sent an email expressing his frustrations with the entire episode. He said, in part:

The reason I called for a review by the Board was because of misleading press reports and statements from elected City officials which were parroting the allegations by the accusers and distorted the issues without looking at the facts of the matter at hand. As the persons being accused, there were never any specific charges or facts of misconduct directed at me or city staff, just allegations about the perception of the possibility that improper behavior could have taken place. Really? 

French clearly felt vindicated by the ethics board's recent findings:

While stopping short of calling for an apology to those that have been falsely accused, I am calling to restore civility to Council Chambers. Skepticism of government is healthy, but continuing personal attacks on ones motives and reputation has turned that skepticism into an obsession as been displayed the last few months. Yes, mistakes will be made, but they get corrected. It's time to get back to solving the problems of Rye that the residents care most about.

Mayor French did not say what elected officials or misleading press reports he was referring to in his statement, but did forward to Patch his response to another reporter's query about the proceedings. In that email, French once again insisted he had done nothing improper or illegal and pointed to lax building violation enforcement 40 years ago and issues with the STAR tax exemption application process –"flaws in the state program are not isolated to Rye, but systemic statewide and complex with changes in the program."

After the February 2 ethics board meeting Councilman Joe Sack criticized the way the ethics review had been conducted:

Unfortunately yet predictably, the flawed process used to arrive at this outcome will only cast even more doubt on the issue, rather than help us to move on from this unwanted distraction. On top of it all, we still don't know the facts, which is why we still need an independent investigation so we can find out what happened from an unimpeachable source, make our own judgments, and put this matter behind us. This course will result in a credible process, which will produce fair results for everyone involved, including the mayor. The regrettable comments by the mayor at this point do not help in that regard. For other members of the council, we did not seek out this problem, but now we are obligated to fix it. We owe it to the public and to the integrity of the process to get this right.

With very little elaboration and no synopsis of testimony given to the board, board chair Elizabeth Matthews' account of the meeting specifies that Mayor French had not received preferential treatment as relates to both STAR tax exemptions at his 13 Richard Place property or potential building violations at the same address.

As reported last week, neither city manager Scott Pickup nor corporation counsel Kristen Wilson recused themselves from the proceedings as they had during a January 12 ethics board meeting. At that time, the board determined only a public employee or elected official had standing to request an ethics review.