Gilbert Town Council Member Yung Koprowski satisfied the legal and ethical requirements to conduct business with the town, according to an independent investigator.
Investigator Sarah Barnes recommended Gilbert Town Council dismiss the two ethics complaints filed against Koprowski in July for having a conflict of interest as her firm, Y2K Engineering, was doing business with the town. The complaints were filed by Maricopa County island resident Terri Naddy.
Barnes concluded that Koprowski, a civil engineer, satisfied all state-required financial reporting and that those records are available publicly. She added that the town’s code of ethics did not prohibit it, nor were there any legal prohibitions.
She further noted that she briefly interviewed all the other members of council, “none of whom indicates any belief that Council Member Koprowski violated the code of ethics with respect to matters raised in Ms. Naddy’s complaints.”
Koprowski expressed gratitude about the findings and recommendation to dismiss.
"I have always been committed to serving the best interests of our town, and I will continue to do so with dedication and integrity," Koprowski said by text from Northern Ireland, where she is with a town delegation to the sister city of Antrim-Newtownabbey. "Thank you to those who supported me throughout this process."
Naddy could be reached for comment.
Naddy filed separate complaints on the two instances where Y2K Engineering did business with the town while Koprowski sat on council.
In her first complaint, Naddy cited Koprowski submitting a bid to provide professional architectural or engineering services for the town on a capital improvement project to install an adaptive signal timing system and associated equipment at nine intersections in the San Tan Village Mall area.
Y2K was contracted into an agreement on this project on Nov. 2, 2020, for $66,570 in labor and expenses. Of that, $5,300 was for subdesigner Landcor.
In the second complaint, Naddy cited Koprowski for submitting a proposal to provide professional services for the town for the firm's “Power BI Data Connection,” a motor vehicle crash dashboard, on Sept. 15, 2022. This proposal was to supplement an already existing dashboard created by Y2K in 2020, Naddy wrote. Payment terms follow their "existing on call” terms, not to exceed $10,000.
Koprowski was not a member of council when the firm entered into the original agreement.
Koprowski previously has said she created a firewall in her company so that she was not involved in the negotiations with the town.
Furthermore, Koprowski decided after the first project that Y2K would no longer do business with the town, but agreed to do the second project as Y2K had installed its dashboard and thus needed to do the upgrade work on it.
Neither contract came to council because of the size of the projects and thus Koprowski never needed to recuse herself from a vote, Barnes wrote.
Furthermore, Naddy acknowledged Koprowski had emailed her the explanations of her involvement and the accompanying documentation, but Naddy was not satisfied with the explanation, Barnes wrote.
Nonetheless, Barnes said she was not persuaded by that “as she does not provide any explanation or evidence to refute the accuracy or validity of Council Member Koprowski’s explanations and supporting evidence, nor any explanation of how any code sections have been violated.”
Barnes said she tried to contact the Arizona Attorney General’s Office because Naddy had filed a similar complaint with that office’s Civil Rights Division. But the office did not return her inquiry on where that submission stood.
However, the Attorney General’s office has not contacted Town Attorney’s office and there is no evidence it is pursuing against Koprowski, Barnes wrote.
“Having found no convincing evidence that supports Ms. Naddy’s allegations of ethical violations, I therefore conclude that Council Member Koprowski has not violated the Town’s Code of Ethics and recommend that these ethical complaints be dismissed in their entirety without further action,” Barnes wrote in conclusion.
Six of the seven ethics complaints filed against council members have now been recommended for dismissal.
A seventh complaint, from Gilbert resident Bill Spence against unnamed council members, is still being investigated. It alleges unnamed council members threatened a Gilbert landowner regarding a project he had coming before council.
Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X. We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@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).
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