Members close books on 2023 ethics complaints, strike conciliatory tone
Screen capture from YouTube
Councilmember Yung Koprowski addresses the ethics complaints that have dogged Gilbert Town Council for the past several months during council's Feb. 6 meeting.
When the Gilbert Town Council closed the book on the final ethics complaint from 2023, it may have signaled a council ready to move forward in a more cooperative fashion.
Councilmember Bobbi Buchli even took a moment to celebrate during the Feb. 6 meeting.
“This council is ethics complaint-free as of today,” Buchli said with a smile, then added with a laugh, “I’m happy about that, so (Councilmember) Jim (Torgeson), behave, would you?”
Buchli’s comments came moments after council agreed to take no action on the report from investigator Sarah Barnes on a complaint filed by resident Maureen Hoppe against Torgeson, her third from last year, all against Torgeson.
Hoppe’s last complaint centered on Torgeson leaking information to a reporter and to a Legislative District 14 Republican Party official in an effort to manipulate the narrative around her complaints and leading to harassment of her.
Barnes found no basis for the complaint in her report and recommended its dismissal. Council, as has often been the case on the most recent complaints, found the investigation lacking but had no appetite to do anything more than choose to ignore it, effectively ending it.
Councilmember Yung Koprowski was the one who called for taking no action as she did not find the investigation very thorough.
But she also extended grace to Torgeson, a frequent target of complaints.
“Councilmember Torgeson has made mistakes along the way during in-person interactions as well as on social media,” she said. “There were times when he communicated and acted in a way that didn’t necessarily align with the professionalism and respect that our positions as elected officials demand. But he’s also not the first or last to do.”
She said making mistakes was part of learning and growing in the role. What was important is to recognize the errors and work to do better.
On that, she signaled the council had been doing so.
“I have felt a noticeable effort and improvement in how we as council have been interacting with each other and the public, thanks to some mediation training that we had last fall and a genuine desire to wipe the slate clean and understanding each other’s different perspectives so that we could work better for the town,” she said.
Koprowski used that night’s meeting as an example of council’s growth as it voted unanimously for painful utility rate hikes to address hemorrhaging enterprise funds because of outside pressures such as construction inflation and water scarcity.
“As we move forward, I trust it’s with professionalism and respect,” she said.
Koprowski said the complaint had given council a chance to take a hard look at its conduct, but the process itself was not working well.
Mayor Brigette Peterson, frequently the target of ethics complaints, including from Torgeson dating back to before his election to council, said she had not been comfortable with any of the ethics reports coming back to council and that the process was broken.
“The ethics complaint process was weaponized to use,” she said. “I didn’t even know it existed. I had been on the council for six and a half, seven years, and I didn’t even know it existed. And it’s disappointing that it’s been used the way that it has over the years.”
The council’s ethics subcommittee is the midst of once again reviewing the process after it made changes last year.
During the public comment period earlier in the evening, Hoppe asked council to table the matter of her complaint because they were being asked to review an investigation where not a single piece of evidence had been provided and that Barnes abruptly ended the investigation without notice while Hoppe was coordinating with her to deliver documents.
She said she received on the afternoon of the meeting hundreds of documents from a public records request, showing dozens of instances of Torgeson sharing information with a reporter and with Scott Runde, chair of Arizona Legislative District 14 Republic Party’s Town Watch committee. She said Runde was responsible for organizing the protest against Gilbert’s Office of Digital Government.
“I have found that Torgeson has also shared information about (ODG Director) Dana Berchman, Yung Koprowski and, of course, good old Mayor Brigette to some of the same very people,” Hoppe said. “Mayor Brigette, I’ve spoken to you one time, but I can see that you’ve been screwed by Torgeson for years. Sorry, I didn’t come speak sooner.”
But even Torgeson, long a vocal critic of the mayor, has softened his tone on Peterson recently. While noting he was not a fan of hers, he nonetheless defended her from attacks on her empathy at a Gilbert Town Council Subcommittee on Teen Violence meeting.
At the Feb. 6 council meeting, Torgeson also praised Peterson’s involvement and contribution to Preston’s Pursuit for Acceptance, a new nonprofit organized by a town firefighter that provides first responders with interactive trainings to help them identify and better work with individuals with autism.
Before the meeting, council had a study session in which it discussed its rules of order and procedure with an eye toward updating town code to reflect current practices.
But part of the discussion centered on getting a handle on practices that allowed the public-comment period — known as “communications from citizens” — to become a staging ground for organized attacks on councilors, most frequently Peterson.
The council looked at different strategies to allow comment as important while maintaining decorum and not losing focus on the meeting’s purpose, which is to conduct the town’s business.
In fall 2022, an item to study the feasibility of two commuter stations in town spiraled into loud protests about the town having plans to bringing light and/or commuter rail. The town has long opposed light rail and bringing commuter rail is beyond council’s scope of authority.
Nonetheless, council struggled to maintain control of its meetings, and the town was sued after Peterson ejected three residents holding protest signs from one meeting.
The town faced similar loud protests over the Ranch light-industrial development project near a Morrison Ranch neighborhood, though eventually some council members helped mediate a compromise between the developers and neighbors.
More recently, LD14 Republicans spearheaded the protest against the Office of Digital Government, which speakers accused of spying on town employees’ social media. A 2021 independent investigation cleared the town of the allegations and found the town had been balanced in its official communications.
Among the strategies discussed were limiting the time for public comments, as some cities do, or moving some or all the comments to the meeting’s conclusion.
The council also looked at its rules of decorum including prohibiting signs and banners; demonstrations from the audience such as applause, stamping of feet, whistles, boos or yells; and personal attacks on the mayor, council members, town staff or members of the public.
Council hesitated to include the portion on personal attacks because of First Amendment implications but ended up giving direction to staff to include it in any code revisions presented later to council.
Brandon Ryff, one of the plaintiffs in lawsuits against the town from the ejections, protested that inclusion in an email, calling it a blatant power grab to silence detractors.
“The mayor and council members all ran ‘personally’ on their own individual merits, are ‘personally’ serving their public office, and are ‘personally’ making decisions that affect the everyday lives of all Gilbert residents,” Ryff wrote. “Accordingly, the people of Gilbert should be allowed to hold the mayor and council members individually accountable and express their opinions freely. Those holding public office should be there to serve the people and should willfully listen to what their constituents have to say.”
We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X.
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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