Fifth ethics complaint of July goes against entire Gilbert council

By Tom Blodgett
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Twitter: @sp_blodgett

The flurry of ethics complaints filed against Gilbert Town Council members in July continued last week with the latest being one against the entire council. 

Former Council Member Bill Spence filed a complaint July 27 naming the entire Gilbert Town Council and listing 10 sections in which different members may have violated the code. 

“This isn't about somebody,” Spence told the Gilbert Independent. “I'm not pursuing a result. I'm pursuing an investigation. I'm pursuing a process that when somebody sees somebody else doing something, that they are empowered to elevate it to an appropriate level such that an investigation can occur and the facts then come to council.” 

Spence, a retired U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, was appointed to council replacing former Council Member Eddie Cook in March 2020 but lost an election in August that year to finish the final two years of Cook’s term. He then lost a chance to win his own seat in 2022 in a runoff with Bobbi Buchli. 

Spence’s complaint is the fifth ethics complaint related to members of Gilbert Town Council filed since July 10. He wrote in his complaint that his efforts were spurred by the “highly unusual” recusal of Council Member Jim Torgeson in the April 18 vote about the District at Cooley Station vertical mixed-use development, which won approval from council on four 6-0 votes that night. 

Spence wrote that Torgeson has been inconsistent in his explanation for why he recused himself and therefore violated the code section on abstaining. 

Further, in looking into the reasons for abstention, he found on a public records request emails where Cooley Station landowner Jeff Cooley reported to Council Member Scott Anderson and Mayor Brigette Peterson that the District at Cooley Station had been threatened by one or more unnamed council members before the April 18 vote, which Spence characterized as possibly violating several sections of the code. 

The Gilbert Independent also obtained those emails by a separate public records request and reported July 27 that Cooley had identified Torgeson, Buchli and the “other new member” — Chuck Bongiovanni — to Peterson as the members threatening the project. 

Torgeson, identified as the leader, said he never made threats. Bongiovanni said he had favored the project, and Buchli could not be reached for comment. Bongiovanni and Buchli voted in favor, and Torgeson had recused himself. 

No ethics complaint was filed off that project vote, but Gilbert resident Maureen Hoppe filed the first complaint in the latest string accusing Torgeson and Buchli of spreading misinformation online and failing to correct it when shown it was wrong. She said that led to harassment of her.  

Hoppe had challenged both council members on their stance with the district as well as the idea of council members voting to give themselves a pay raise, an issue that has never come before the current council. 

Hoppe’s complaint included as evidence a voicemail from Torgeson in which he disparaged Peterson in regard to why he recused himself, an act that led Peterson to file the second ethics complaint after Hoppe’s complaint was distributed to council members. 

That was enough backdrop for Spence to file his complaint. He said residents feeling intimidated or bullied by council members is a problem that needs to be addressed. 

“I identified all councilmembers in my complaint due to evidence suggesting that one or more councilmembers may have had sufficient information to believe that a violation of laws or the Code of Ethics had occurred, and that an investigation was warranted,” Spence wrote in his complaint. “One or more councilmembers may have failed to report these violations as required by Policy Statement No. 2012-03, Section 7.2 (Obligation to Report Violations) …” 

However, Spence wrote that while he would not identify which council members failed to report, he found no evidence that Council Member Yung Koprowski failed to do so and added that evidence showed Peterson had met her obligation to report. 

Spence emphasized that he was not accusing anyone of illegal activity but wrote that he believed an investigation was warranted. 

He also asked for four short-term actions: 

• Assignment of an independent investigator to the complaint; 
• Review of the Aug. 1 council agenda to identify and mitigate possible conflicts of interest; 
• Postpone an Aug. 1 study session that discusses defining conflict of interests for public-body members conducting business with the town; 
• Review of the recent Code of Ethics revisions scheduled to be implemented Aug. 20 as well as the members of the subcommittee doing the work, which includes Torgeson, Anderson and Council Member Kathy Tilque. 

The Aug. 1 study session was requested by Torgeson, Buchli and Bongiovanni after Gilbert resident Terri Naddy filed two complaints July 13 against Koprowski, whose firm Y2K Engineering had done a project after her appointment in April 2020 as well as a repair from a project the firm had otherwise done before her council appointment.  

Koprowski said she had created a firewall at her firm to separate her from the firm’s dealings with the town after her appointment, but later decided to drop doing business with the town. 

Naddy has since asked the town to put the complaint on hold until after the Aug. 1 study session.

Spence wrote in his complaint that evidence suggests “the timing and content of this (study session) may not have been agendized in good faith and may be retaliatory and diversionary in nature.” 

Spence noted that Koprowski harshly criticized Buchli, Torgeson and Bongiovanni at the June 6 final budget adoption when they voted no against the budget. They said they did so because they felt they had not been given enough input into the process, though they had no specific criticism of the budget and staff had been very accessible to them in the five months since they had joined council.

The three had voted yes the previous month for the preliminary adoption and raised no such concerns. 

“There is a very, very deliberate sequence of events that took place from that council meeting, and in the days and weeks following that, even as soon as a few days from that,” Spence said.  

He believed the timing of the complaint against Koprowski came from Torgeson and Buchli having the Hoppe complaint filed against them three days earlier. 

“The narrative going into the weekend was an ethics complaint going against them, but yet magically this other ethics complaint pops up and was forwarded to dozens of people,” Spence said. 

Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on Twitter.  We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. 

Tom Blodgett
Senior News Editor | Gilbert
@sp_blodgett

tblodgett@iniusa.org

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).