A Gilbert resident and longtime mayoral critic is the latest person to file an ethics complaint against a member of Gilbert Town Council.
Brandon Ryff, a Scottsdale dentist who lives in Gilbert, filed his complaint Aug. 18 against Mayor Brigette Peterson.
The complaint runs parallel to his lawsuits against the town in connection with his ejection from a contentious council meeting in September when he and two others held up signs directed at Peterson that said, “Stop lying.”
Ryff and fellow residents Ryan Handelsman and Joanne Terry, represented by attorney Timothy La Sota, filed suit in the U.S. District Court of Arizona, asserting the town and council denied them their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, assembly, association and to communicate with their elected officials, along with their 14th Amendment rights to due process and equal protection under the law.
Additionally, Ryff filed suit in Maricopa County Superior Court alleging the town’s actions defamed him and subjected him to a false light invasion of property.
Ryff indicated in his complaint that filing separately from the lawsuit was necessary to decide separate issues.
“Since ethics and legality are not mutually exclusive nor are they inextricably linked, it is possible for one’s actions to be: legal and ethical, not legal but ethical, legal but not ethical, or in the case of the mayor not legal or ethical,” he wrote. “However, the proper venue to adjudicate legal matters is through the court and the proper venue to adjudicate ethical matters is through the ethics complaint process prescribed by Gilbert Town Policy.”
He noted in his complaint that another resident, Terri Naddy, had filed an ethics complaint against Peterson as a result of the ejections and that an independent investigator, Phoenix attorney William Sims, cleared the mayor of any ethics violation.
However, Ryff dismissed that finding as the result of a “sham, grossly-one sided investigation” that interviewed the mayor and her corroborating witnesses but did not interview the people ejected or any witnesses who might refute her claims.
“Bill Sims then produced what any reasonable person would likely consider a bogus, grossly lopsided, unfair report — one written in a manner appearing submissive to the mayor and blindly sympathetic-of/tailored-to, every ludicrous claim in the contrived narrative provided the mayor,” Ryff wrote.
Ryff spends much of the complaint dissecting a statement Peterson issued after the meeting defending her actions in ejecting the three residents as a means of maintaining decorum at a meeting that she and then-Vice Mayor Aimee Yentes struggled to control.
“Nothing about three residents holding a sign, silently and without movement even comes close to meeting that definition (of an actual disruption),” Ryff wrote. “The mayor saw a sign containing a message she didn’t like, held up by people (she) didn’t like and then used her position of power as mayor to retaliate.”
He contrasted the “Stop Lying” message on his sign, which he says was directed at Peterson, with a “Don’t Mesa My Gilbert” sign held by other people at the meeting but that did not elicit a response from Peterson, which Ryff said proves that his ejection was at least in part content-based in violation of his First Amendment rights.
Ryff also contended Peterson broke chain of command by telling police to remove a sign from an attendee earlier in the meeting — something police did not do once the woman put down her sign — and then having the three residents removed from the meeting.
Ryff said Peterson should not have ordered police to do so, but rather directed the request to Town Manager Patrick Banger as being in charge of town employees then to Police Chief Michael Soelberg, in charge of officers.
In the complaint, Ryff said he texted with then-Council Member Laurin Hendrix during the meeting, who said he had messaged Town Attorney Chris Payne in the meeting that he did not think the mayor could prohibit the display of signs.
Ryff’s complaint says that Hendrix texted from the dais that evening and “encouraged (him) to ‘Push the envelope. Hold up every sign. Make news.’”
Hendrix, now serving in the Arizona House of Representatives, and Peterson also previously had clashed about the mayor’s ethics, though Hendrix voted to clear the mayor of a set of five previous ethics complaints.
Peterson could not be reached for comment on the latest complaint.
Ryff said by text message to the Gilbert Independent that the mayor going on the offensive to retaliate against residents is unacceptable from a public official. He said it is not an isolated incident and that since she became mayor, problems have plagued council.
“Despite what the mayor thinks, it’s obvious she is the problem,” he said. “The problems began when Mayor Peterson took office. Then even after another election, the mayor continued to have problems, butting heads with every single new council member.”
He charged that the mayor needs to improve her “emotional intelligence skills” to reduce interpersonal conflict.
“It is our hope that Gilbert finally assigns an investigator with a spine to call it like it is,” he said. “The mayor needs a reality check and before we focus on solution, she must first agree she has a problem.”
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.
Tom Blodgett Senior News Editor | Gilbert @sp_blodgett
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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