Gilbert Town Council dismissed ethics complaints against three of its members Tuesday, but voted to allow an investigation of another complaint against Mayor Brigette Peterson to move forward.
Council voted 6-0 at its regular meeting to accept four reports from independent investigator Kenneth Fields, all of which concluded that no ethics violation had occurred: a joint complaint from resident Maureen Hoppe against council members Jim Torgeson and Bobbi Buchli, which Fields handled in separate reports; one against Torgeson from Peterson; and one against Peterson from Council Member Chuck Bongiovanni.
However, a complaint against Peterson from residents Brandon Ryff and Ryan Handelsman will be assigned to an investigator, though Town Attorney Christopher Payne had recommended to council that it not be. Council voted 4-1 to allow the investigation with Peterson abstaining and Scott Anderson voting in dissent.
Two other complaints against Council Member Yung Koprowski were not on the agenda and allowed to die administratively as independent investigator Sarah Barnes concluded Koprowski had properly disclosed her engineering firm’s business dealings with the town. Koprowski was absent from the meeting.
Ryff-Handelsman complaint
Ryff and Handelsman, critics of the mayor, had filed a complaint last month against Peterson stemming from their ejection from a council meeting in September 2022, in which they held signs protesting the mayor.
A subsequent ethics complaint filed by Maricopa County island resident Terri Naddy over the mayor’s actions was dismissed last year after an investigator found no wrongdoing and that the mayor was acting within her authority to try to handle a raucous meeting. Neither Ryff nor Handelsman were interviewed for that investigation.
Payne recommended dismissal of the Ryff-Handelsman complaint based on the previous finding and that reopening the investigation of the same incident would deny the mayor her due process rights.
But council members Torgeson, Buchli and Bongiovanni requested the complaint be placed on the agenda.
The trio argued that the complaint should be allowed to move forward to an investigation because the process was flawed in that a third party, Naddy, who was not among the ejected, had filed it and that the aggrieved parties were never interviewed. The council members said Ryff and Handelsman should have their say.
Vice Mayor Kathy Tilque questioned whether reopening an investigation would set a precedent that would allow future ethics complaints to be consistently reopened when people did not like the outcome.
But Bongiovanni and Torgeson doubted that such unusual circumstances as with this complaint would be repeated. Bongiovanni added that he was unhappy with the results of his complaint against the mayor but that he would not be refiling his complaint as he thought the investigation to be fair.
Anderson wondered if there was another way to handle the complaint without spending more money for another investigation.
“I object to all of these, and I have said this one time before,” he said. “We are hurting our community. We are hurting our community terribly. We’ve got to get through this. We’re in the middle of mediation. We’re trying to get things settled, and we’ve got this all buzzing around on the outside, causing more trouble.”
Ryff and Handelsman, who have filed a lawsuit on the matter, spoke during public comment, both noting the timing of Tuesday’s meeting being nearly a year from the day they were ejected.
Ryff said he would drop the town from the lawsuit if it would not indemnify the mayor in her defense of it.
“The mayor started this fight, and she needs to finish it,” he said. “Leave the taxpayers out of it and let the mayor fight her own fight. I won’t get any money out of the mayor, but I will get justice, and I will separate my good name from the mayor’s malicious lies.”
Handelsman challenged the mayor to welcome an investigation if she believes she has done nothing wrong.
For her part, when Peterson was allowed to speak on the matter in her defense, she did just that.
“I honor the process,” she said. “I welcome the investigation and findings as I have every other time.”
In an email to council after the meeting, Ryff said he and Handelsman did not want to interrupt the meeting but tried to communicate that they were willing to save the taxpayers the money spent on an investigation.
“We would be willing to withdraw the ethics complaint with a simple apology from the mayor,” Ryff wrote. “In Arizona, I believe the law makes it so any type of apology is not admissible in court and is not accepted as admission of wrongdoing. So, this isn’t a trick, we are sincerely trying to be reasonable. The mayor is free to apologize with no legal repercussions and only her ego can get in the way.”
Accepting the reports
In their comments on Fields’ four reports, council members expressed a desire to move forward and get back to the business of the town.
Tilque spoke about Hoppe’s complaint against Torgeson, which included a voicemail in which Torgeson disparaged Peterson. Fields found that Torgeson’s private comment was not an ethics violation but that he should be cautioned about the special duties and responsibilities of a council member.
In her comments, she noted that Torgeson and all council members had since received training on conflicts of interest and that she appreciated the new council members’ willingness to learn.
“Saying negative things about each other, even in private conversations, does not violate an ethics policy, (but) it quickly becomes a public statement, as we just evidenced in this particular claim,” she said. “What I am hoping is that, sometime in the near future, that we all make a commitment to stop this type of negative behavior and comments toward each other and stay focused on the business of the town.”
Tilque said she hoped council members, when they make mistakes in the information they give out, will acknowledge them to the person and correct them, something Hoppe said Torgeson did not do.
Regarding his claim, Bongiovanni asked council members to reject the findings on his report and hold Peterson accountable for her actions. He went over each of the points of his complaint and said if her actions were not ethics violations, then the standards were too low.
In his complaint, Bongiovanni accused the mayor of filing her complaint against Torgeson for political purposes and noted the mayor gave the complaint to the press before the clerk’s office to process it and distribute it to council members. Peterson's complaint had been based on the voicemail Torgeson left for Hoppe about Peterson.
He also objected to Peterson being involved with a meeting with a resident seeking to remove Torgeson from his seat on the council’s ethics subcommittee.
Fields, however, found that Peterson had a sincere belief that Torgeson had violated the ethics code, even if she stood to gain politically from it. He also said the meeting with a constituent was normal political activity.
Tilque said she was only looking at the findings of the report, though she expressed hope that the new ethics code and process put in place Aug. 20 would end the “one-upsmanship” she saw going on among council members and some citizens in using the old code against one another.
All of the ethics complaints were filed under the former code and handled under that process.
Anderson asked if Bongiovanni’s continued complaint could be resolved outside the ethics process, to which Bongiovanni replied he would only want accountability in the way of an apology, even if it were not a public one.
“The only reason I ask is because the two of you (Bongiovanni and Torgeson) asked me at one point if I felt it came to a point where I had to say, ‘Knock it off,’ we’d knock it off,” Anderson said. “And I hope we’re to that point.”
Peterson said she has heard the community’s request that the council move forward with respect, civility and the leadership traits for which they were each elected. She said mediation has been valuable and she accepts her role as one of the seven town leaders on council.
She said she respects the ethics complaint process and the findings of the investigators and won’t debate them further.
“I cannot change the past, but I can learn from it,” she said. “And more importantly, I can choose to use my one vote to support unifying efforts. It’s time we begin to look for opportunities to be a team.”
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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