Gilbert Town Council requests mayor get more training
Members skewer ethics investigation as 'woefully incomplete'
Screen capture from YouTube
Mayor Brigette Peterson responds to Gilbert Town Council comments about an ethics investigation into her ejecting three residents from a meeting last year.
Expressing disappointment in how an ethics complaint investigation was conducted, Gilbert Town Council voted to accept an independent investigator’s report but not his findings on Mayor Brigette Peterson while compelling further training for her.
Council also left open the possibility of further penalties if Peterson did not complete open meetings law training, which it asked Town Manager Patrick Banger to arrange with the Arizona League of Cities and Towns.
But by accepting the report, if not its findings, council stopped short of saying Peterson committed an ethics violation when she ejected three residents from a council meeting in September 2022. That action was the source of the ethics complaint from two of the ejected residents, Brandon Ryff and Ryan Handelsman.
The report from independent investigator Kenneth Fields, a retired judge, found the mayor committed no ethics violation in ejecting the trio from the meeting, in which council struggled to control a raucous crowd. The three were holding up signs that protested against the mayor.
Vice Mayor Kathy Tilque said she could understand the mayor acting poorly in a moment of frustration after being overwhelmed as meetings that fall had been filled with increasingly angry residents about issues like commuter rail and The Ranch industrial development near Morrison Ranch residents.
However, she said the mayor continues to display inconsistencies in meeting management during stressful periods, leading the town to this moment.
“This is not a one-off situation where there is a series of missteps that have come at a high cost to our community's reputation,” Tilque said. “I'm saddened that she doesn't acknowledge or recognize that she could or should have handled these situations differently, and that, ladies and gentlemen, to me is an unfortunate lack of leadership, and this community deserves better.”
It was Tilque who called for the additional training for the mayor.
“It's because of her actions and lack of willingness to accept assistance and advice regarding these leadership skills that leads me to believe that the mayor requires additional training to continue in the role of chairing these council meetings,” she said.
Council members quickly zeroed in on the report’s deficiencies as discussion began. Fields had declined to interview some of the eyewitnesses Ryff and Handelsman asked to be interviewed, writing in the report that he determined that those interviews would not be fruitful.
That drew a letter of protest from Ryff, who also addressed the council earlier in the meeting about it, but also criticism from council members.
“We as a council gave the directive that we wanted an investigation to be completed, and what we received instead, in my opinion, was an opinion of whether an investigation should be performed,” Councilmember Chuck Bongiovanni said. “Every single council member sitting up here tonight should be upset that our directive was ignored and not followed up by the investigator.”
Council asked in September that an investigation be done despite advice from Town Attorney Chris Payne to not take up the complaint because a similar complaint about the ejections from someone not ejected had found no ethical violation. Payne said reopening the investigation could affect the mayor’s due process rights.
However, that investigator never interviewed the ejected residents, and council members said in September they believed the three had a right to be heard.
Councilmember Jim Torgeson called the second investigation “hilariously indefensible, woefully incomplete” for not interviewing the requested witnesses, which included himself, Bongiovanni and Councilmember Bobbi Buchli, all three of whom would be elected to council that fall but were not members at the time of the meeting.
“I don't agree with the conclusion based on a lack of investigation,” Torgeson said. “If I felt everything was done, I can easily accept someone's interpretation of ethics … but it wasn't done.”
Torgeson said he found ethics investigations to be unfruitful and did not want to waste more town money pursuing it again with another, more thorough investigation — a sentiment with which other council members agreed.
Given a chance to respond, Peterson said she has always honored the process.
“I'm concerned with the appearance of penalizing me by not accepting (the report’s findings) due to the concerns about the investigation process that I had nothing to do with,” she said. “It saddens me to see that this is continuing in the community. I love this community, and I have served this community honorably for many years and will continue to do so.”
Ryff said after the meeting that he is disappointed the situation has come this far when all he wanted originally was an apology and $1.
“The mayor refused to do that,” he said. “It took me getting an attorney and filing two lawsuits and spending tens of thousands of dollars just to get this issue before the public. And my concern is, what would have happened if this would have not involved me and involved instead another resident who was either unable or unwilling to provide the support the legal effort that ultimately, I believe, catalyzed this process.”
Ryff praised Tilque for holding the mayor to account while walking a fine line with what she could legally say.
Ryff said he wishes someone could say that he was not disruptive that evening but is confident they could not for legal reasons with the lawsuits pending.
“I’ve got to defend my reputation, which has been soiled by these lies,” he said. “They need to acknowledge that what they did was wrong, and they can either do it or I can have the court acknowledge that they’re wrong. That’s the choice they have here. I think it’s the right step today.”
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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