Landowner's concerns about Gilbert councilmember now part of ethics investigation

By Tom Blodgett
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The last unresolved ethics complaint from a spate of seven filed against Gilbert council members during the summer has expanded since it was filed and now includes a recording of a prominent landowner wondering if a council member is extorting him. 

The recording is of a phone call April 14 between landownwer Jeff Cooley and Mayor Brigette Peterson. It is a follow-up call to an email Cooley sent to the mayor April 13 in which he wrote that the District at Cooley Station project had been threatened by one or more unnamed council members before a scheduled April 18 vote. 

Cooley owned the land proposed for the project, which is being done by Kaplan Multifamily. 

The recording confirms Peterson’s account of the call in which she said Cooley named Council Members Jim Torgeson, Bobbi Buchli and the “other new member” — Chuck Bongiovanni — of planning to vote against the project, with Torgeson leading the effort. 

The District at Cooley Station subsequently passed April 18 on four separate 6-0 votes with Bongiovanni and Buchli voting for the project and Torgeson recusing himself, later indicating on a town disclosure form that he did so because a “citizen felt I was inappropriately opposed.” 

Former Councilmember Bill Spence filed an ethics complaint July 27 against unnamed council members after filing numerous public-records requests in which he uncovered Cooley’s email to Peterson and a similar one to Councilmember Scott Anderson. The email read the three council members would vote against the project unless the Cooleys agreed not to sue the town over commuter rail. 

Torgeson previously denied he was attempting to pressure Cooley. 

“I haven't listened to it (the recording),” Torgeson said Friday by phone from Atlanta, where he is attending the National League of Cities conference. “I don't care to listen to it. I know what the truth is. I experienced it.”  

Commuter rail, a highly contentious issue in fall 2022, was not part of the District at Cooley Station project, but there is Cooley Station land identified as a site for a possible commuter station. 

Spence said the “highly unusual” recusal was why he began filing the requests. He said at the time it was less about filing a complaint against someone than it was seeking an investigation into what happened. 

Phone call 

In the April 14 phone call, Cooley told Peterson that he was contacted by the developer’s attorney, Sean Lake, and said there was trouble with the project vote.  

In Cooley’s retelling, Torgeson approached Lake and asked that Cooley sign an agreement not to sue the town if commuter rail was not brought in, otherwise Torgeson, Buchli and “the other one” would vote against it. Furthermore, Torgeson was alleged to have speculated the mayor would vote against it once Torgeson brought out Morrison Ranch “activists” to protest to council against it. 

“I said, ‘I don't understand,’” Cooley said on the recording. “’Why are they holding us hostage, that case to this?’” noting The District is unrelated to commuter rail. 

Cooley said Lake confirmed that is how Torgeson explained it. 

“So finally, Sean sent me a statement, a little short statement,” Cooley said. “It says, ‘Can you agree to the statement, Jeff, and sign it and let's send it back to Torgeson.’ And when I got it, I thought, ‘I'm not going to promise that.’” 

Cooley said he cannot make the promise because the cases are unrelated. He only represents his family and there are other parties involved. Furthermore, he noted he does not see under the Cooley Station development agreement where suing would be a recourse if a commuter station does not come to fruition. 

“So I just told (Lake), I says, ‘Plus I know the political games that (Torgeson is) playing here, and I'm not going to be part of that anyway,’” Cooley said. “So it's really caused a problem. Sean has approached me several times since. Mr. Kaplan, matter of fact, Mr. Kaplan flew in all the way from I think Texas or something to have a meeting with me this morning about this. In other words, probably to put pressure on me to agree to Torgeson's (demand) so he can get this thing approved. 

“I think this is wrong. I said, ‘Are they extorting us in a way for holding our project up that has nothing to do with the commuter rail station or anything?’” 

Peterson spoke little on the phone call, but apologized to Cooley for being put in that situation and said that is not how the town conducts business and the case would be heard on its merits. 

Contacted in Atlanta, Bongiovanni said he was not part of any pressure campaign.

"I was upset my name was even mentioned or even a hint of my name," he said.

Buchli sent an emailed statement to the Gilbert Independent.

"I am not in any way, nor ever have been, a part of the recorded conversation involving Mr. Cooley, items mentioned in it or any recording regarding of Mr. Cooley," she wrote. "I had no knowledge of any letter nor was I a part of any conversation. Anyone who is saying and/or continues to say I did, is putting out false and defamatory information.

"I have and will continue to evaluate each and every matter that comes before me in my role as a Councilmember on its own merits."

The Kaplan attorney, Sean Lake, could not be reached for comment.

Mayor’s follow-up 

Prior to the phone call, Peterson had forwarded the email from Cooley to Town Attorney Christopher Payne. She also reported it to Assistant Town Managers Leah Rhineheimer and Mary Goodman, as Town Manager Patrick Banger was out of town. 

She said she also forwarded the recording after the call. But it never came to the forefront in the public record until Spence found it in a public-records request and added it to this complaint. 

Peterson said she was advised not to forward it to council because sending it to more than two council members would break open meeting law, and, furthermore, it was not a topic that could be discussed in executive session as defined by state law. 

“I found myself to be in a very difficult situation, being advised that I couldn't share the full story, including this recording with the members of the council,” she said. “So they never knew about this, and I had all of this knowledge and didn't have a mechanism in place to legally share it with them.” 

In May, Torgeson said in a voice mail message to town resident Maureen Hoppe that Peterson was unsuccessfully trying to get him charged with extortion. 

“She’s that (expletive),” he said in that message. “She’s that bad a human being.”  

Hoppe included that recording in an ethics complaint against Torgeson, which was later dismissed after an independent investigation.  

Peterson filed her own ethics complaint against Torgeson, and included Hoppe’s voice mail, saying Torgeson was trying to create a false narrative about her trying to get him charged with extortion. But she did not include the recording.  

“I followed through with what the council requested, which was to not do an investigation,” she said. “So this never came out at that time, and I didn't include it in my ethics complaint because I had agreed with the council to not investigate this situation. And I found this to be part of that, and I've struggled with that since April.” 

Her own ethics complaint also was dismissed because the investigator concluded Torgeson’s privately expressed opinion of the mayor did not rise to the level of an ethics complaint. But Peterson said that was not what the complaint was about, but rather the false narrative that she was trying to get him charged with extortion. 

“He (Cooley) sent an email,” Peterson said. “I had a phone call with him. I took it to staff, believing that's what I needed to do. That was my duty, was to report it to our staff, which I did immediately. And there was no mechanism in place for us at the town to then follow up with this situation.  

“We don't have a code that speaks to it. We don't have a policy that speaks to it, and there's really no law in place. It would have to have been most likely the landowner that would've had to file something.” 

Council reaction 

Anderson said he did speak with Cooley as well after being contacted by email.  

“My only concern at the time was that Jeff (Cooley) was probably making it a bigger deal than it actually was, but I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes — if he was having other meetings with other people,” Anderson said. 

Vice Mayor Kathy Tilque and Council Member Yung Koprowski said they are awaiting the full report from the investigator on Spence’s complaint. 

“I am surprised that the recording didn't come to light earlier,” Koprowski said. “I believe it's really important that the current investigator … thoroughly evaluate the new evidence and consider it in context of the investigation. I think that it's important that the town staff, council members, development community, residents, that we all are in an environment where we're working candidly to understand what actually happened and that we are fair and impartial in the review.” 

Torgeson questioned the validity of the recording, coming so many months after the call.  

Anderson also questioned the mayor recording a phone call when he does not believe Cooley knew she was recording. Arizona is a one-party consent state, so a recording would have been legal. 

Bongiovanni also said he had a problem with the recording and said phone logs show  Peterson called Cooley for one minute, then called back and started recording.

"How do you build trust with the council and with citizens if you're recording phone calls?" he said.

Spence complaint 

Since his original filing, Spence has filed four amendments that added supplemental information to be investigated, including the phone call.  

In those amendments, he also charged that an Aug. 1 council study session about strengthening conflict-of-interest rules — asked for by Torgeson, Bongiovanni and Buchli — may have been retaliatory in nature against Koprowski, who strongly criticized the three for their position in voting against the town budget June 6. 

Likewise, Spence pointed to the Aug. 1 special meeting asked for by the trio to conduct a vote of no confidence in the mayor as having no basis to be called and done in retaliation for her criticism of the budget vote and her ethics complaint. 

He also alleges that Torgeson, in his position as a member of the ethic subcommittee, may have acted to protect himself in new ethics rules, knowing he could be under investigation from her interaction with Cooley. 

Spence said he understands the investigation is near completion but that was lengthened when he forwarded the phone recording. 

“It is my hope that critical interviews are followed up now that people have knowledge and have had a chance to listen to the recording because I think it substantially changes the validity of the initial complaint,” he said. “It is no longer speculation as to the origin of the complaint. It does really tie everything together very tightly about what it appears may have happened back in April.” 

Spence said he was not seeking to file a complaint when he began looking into Torgeson’s recusal, but rather why Torgeson did it. After he obtained Cooley’s emails, he hoped it warranted a serious investigation from council. 

“It is not a pursuit of accountability nearly as much as it is validation of a process that citizens who feel unjustly treated have a process to lodge their grievances and the council will take them seriously and investigate them appropriately,” he said. 

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).