Gilbert Town Council considers taking out ethics handbook, beefing up Code of Conduct

By Tom Blodgett
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Having been through a deluge of ethics complaints in 2023, Gilbert Town Council is considering rolling parts of its ethics handbook into its Code of Conduct for officials and eliminating the remainder. 

That recommendation came from council’s ethics subcommittee, which has been considering revisions to a process that members have found to be broken, expensive and being used as a political weapon rather than for its original purpose. 

After considering the matter during a study session, council voted unanimously during the business meeting to continue the item until its April 2 meeting, giving staff time to make proposed revisions to the code and allow council members to digest them. 

The Code of Conduct, which defines how elected officials are to treat the public, staff and each other, has the advantage of being more specific about what is expected of council members than the broad language used in the ethics handbook. 

It would require the penalties from the ethics handbook to be added to the Code of Conduct "so there would be some type of recourse or teeth to enforce the Code of Conduct," Town Attorney Chris Payne said.

However, repealing the ethics handbook comes with one big caveat: members of the public cannot file a complaint under the Code of Conduct. Instead, they would have find a council member to sponsor a complaint for them. 

That brought immediate attention from the council members who do not serve on the ethics subcommittee. 

“To me, that doesn't sound like that would go over very well with the public — to turn around and say, ‘Hey, you no longer can file an ethics complaint. You have to come to a council member,’” Councilmember Bobbi Buchli said. “And I think we've already had that issue where they say, ‘Well, you guys protect each other anyway.’” 

But Vice Mayor Scott Anderson, who serves on the ethics subcommittee, said some frivolous complaints have taken council’s focus away from issues with which it needs to deal. 

“Just the sheer number of them (ethics complaints) just really bothers me,” he said. “It takes our time away from other things, and having citizens not be able to, unless they're sponsored by a council member, to bring a complaint, that is going to serve to help us limit the number of those, especially the frivolous ones.” 

Buchli asked what was wrong with the previous ethics process from before the town made revisions last June. 

“I can simply say the process doesn't work, period,” Mayor Brigette Peterson said in reply. “It doesn't work. Nothing about the process works, including the advice from the town attorney as far as I'm concerned. I don't think we've gotten great evaluations from some of the investigators that we've hired. I don't think that the process has worked.” 

Gilbert would not be alone in not having an ethics code. Payne said most of Gilbert’s neighboring cities do not. Instead, cases are referred to the attorney general or Maricopa County attorney to determine if anything illegal has happened. 

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. 

Tom Blodgett
Senior News Editor | Gilbert

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).