Ethics charges stalled

Hooksett Editor — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 21:25:00 GMT

No committee to investigate, no penalties outlined

BY NICHOLAS BROWN

A growing stack of papers calling for investigations into alleged ethics violations by town officials has been collecting dust at the Epsom town offices while selectmen struggle to assemble an ethics committee.

That struggle exists in part, said selectmen Chairman Joni Kitson because selectmen – all but one of whom is accused of unethical behavior – don’t want to appear to have conflicts of interest when it comes to filling a five-member ethics board.

“The big thing is the appearance,” Kitson said. “We all have ethics complaints against us.”

Since March, at least 15 ethics complaints have been filed, according to town records.

The charges cover an array of topics – one alleges misuse of the town copy machine, while others trumpet allegedly illicit meetings with town employees – and all suggest some sort of conflict of interest on the part of one or more elected officials.

Adding to the confusion is that some of the ethics allegations cite actions related to the formation and subsequent revisions of the town’s ethics code.

For example, a charge filed by library trustee and water commissioner Gary Kitson, Joni Kitson’s husband, reads, “I am complaining under the code of ethics that portions of the code of ethics are missing,” he wrote.

Gary Kitson further stated, “The code is missing the section on how to pick the ethics committee.

The code is also missing the section on what the penalty is for violations. The reasons these are missing appear to be violations of ethics (not doing the job of keeping the records safe).”

Four selectmen – Joni Kitson, Co-Chairman Mary Frambach, Bob McKechnie and Peter Bosiak – have all been accused of at least one ethics violation.

Ethics charges have also been lodged against Gary Kitson, Town Moderator Gary Matteson, and former selectmen Julie Clermont and John Hickey, who’s also the town’s zoning compliance officer.

At least five people – including Hickey, Gary Kitson, school board member and former road agent Gordon Ellis and residents Leonard Gilman and Rob Topik – have filed the ethics charges.

Topik alone has alleged ethics violations by at least seven current and former elected officials, according to records.

Hickey, who also filed charges in May against Joni and Gary Kitson, told selectmen recently he’s frustrated with the board’s lack of progress in firming up an ethics board to investigate all the complaints.

“It makes you guys look like you’re running from them,” Hickey said at a recent selectmen’s meeting.

The town has had an ethics code since 2001, but nowhere in the code was it spelled out how to form an ethics committee, said Joni Kitson.

The board revised the code earlier this year, and included a process by which the town moderator appoints two ethics committee members, the supervisors of the checklist appoint two, and selectmen appoint one.

McKechnie, who was elected in May, was pegged as the selectmen’s representative to that group, “because at that time there were no ethics charges against me,” McKechnie said.

He said the group was working toward forming a committee, and even went so far as to draft five interview questions for ethics committee volunteers.

“As soon as we did that, then some ethics charges came in against me,” McKechnie said.

Joni Kitson said the moderator’s role was also called into question after two of the three supervisors of the checklist recently resigned, and he was charged with appointing replacements for the two spots.

Kitson said there’s no truth to the idea that selectmen are stalling the formation of the ethics committee.

She said weekly selectmen’s meetings regularly last more than four or five hours, and have lately been filled with annual budget preparations.

“There’s only so much a person can do, or people can do,” she said. “It’s not that we want to put this on the back burner.”

McKechnie said a difficulty with forming a new ethics committee is that people will invariably perceive conflicts of interest.

“You can never make everyone happy out there,” he said. “There’s just no way – not in our organization or any other organization.”

Epsom News : Ethics

Ethics charges stalled