With Gilbert Town Council set to consider a recommendation to dismiss the last ethics complaint of 2023, the resident who filed it is charging the town is incapable of investigating council members’ misconduct.
Maureen Hoppe’s complaint from Oct. 30, her third against Councilmember Jim Torgeson from 2023, charges Torgeson committed ethical violations by “providing information and coordinating interviews with local media for the purpose of manipulating the public narrative pertaining to the circumstances surrounding (her) ethics complaint filed previously.”
Council will consider investigator Sarah Barnes' recommendation to dismiss the complaint at its Feb. 6 meeting at Gilbert Town Hall.
Hoppe's third complaint built off her second complaint that was based on Torgeson’s comments from the dais when her first complaint was dismissed. He said at that time he refused to get in the mud and “wrestle with a pig.”
Hoppe then charged he called her a “pig” from the dais, which Torgeson denied and said he was referring to the complaint process.
Her first complaint, from July, charged Torgeson and Councilmember Bobbi Buchli with presenting misinformation on topics and then refusing to correct it when she pointed it out, leading to harassment of her in some online groups and ending her work as Legislative District 14 Republican Party precinct committee member.
Along the way, Hoppe frequently has expressed frustration with the ethics complaint process and getting what she deemed a fair hearing.
A required mediation in December on the third complaint, for example, was declared to be at an impasse before Hoppe and Torgeson ever met face to face with just the mediator having spoken to both.
Hoppe also tried to withdraw her latest complaint last week in part because she did not believe Barnes would give her a fair hearing. Hoppe said Barnes refused to look at much of her evidence as it was either considered outside the scope of her investigation or Hoppe was still awaiting for results from public-records requests.
Barnes, in her report on the complaint released Jan. 31, found that Torgeson committed no ethical violations “with respect to forwarding the prior ethical complaint to a reporter and explaining to the reporter his intent behind statements made in a public meeting, nor is there convincing evidence of any violation of any applicable public records law.”
She recommended council dismiss the complaint.
But Barnes’ conclusion while Hoppe was still awaiting results from public-records requests drew fire from Hoppe in an email to the Gilbert Independent.
“Nearly every investigation conducted this last year has been challenged,” Hoppe wrote. “Investigators friendly to the town were hand-picked, the investigators refused to conduct interviews with key witnesses, and they willfully ignored evidence that clearly shows the misconduct of council members. The town’s inability to produce public records showing misconduct is no longer coincidence and now appears to be deliberate.”
In fact, at least two investigations not spurred by complaints from Hoppe drew council members to say they were dissatisfied with the investigations.
And Torgeson said he at least partially agrees with her on that point.
“Maybe that's true, right?” Torgeson said. “I mean, there's other things where I've looked at their investigations and felt that they were subpar. I mean, I can't say that I don't fully see that.”
But on Hoppe’s complaints, he said the idea that he could not share an ethics complaint against him or speak about it when a reporter asked him questions was meritless on its face.
Hoppe called the investigations “shams” and she said she has evidence of laws being broken and that the investigations were “everything short of a cover-up.”
“Most of the town council would be happy to sweep this under the rug in hopes that it will just go away, but I believe that we may need to involve someone that is not biased with the ability to subpoena records and compel testimony under oath,” she wrote.
Torgeson is hoping the town is ready to move on.
“I hope that the era of superfluous claims has gone past us,” 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.
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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