Adding an ethics clause onto the town’s charter was one of several recommendations made by the Salem Charter Reform Committee about eight months before Selectman Patrick Hargreaves came under fire for alleged unethical behavior.

At the Board of Selectmen’s inquiry into the June 13 incident, in which police complained that Hargreaves allegedly tried to use his position as an elected official to exert influence over an officer, Peter Solomon, Hargreaves’ lawyer, challenged the authority of the board to take any punitive action under RSA 49-D:4, noninterference by the elected body. Solomon argued that without a procedure in place within the town charter to investigate and decide issues of interference, any attempt to remove Hargreaves would be illegitimate.

“All town officers act within a certain scope of authority. Your town charter – the entire two pages of it – talks about who the legislative body is in this community ... The form of government is the people. They are the legislative body.

They are the ones who make the important decisions,” Solomon told the board. “What statute authorizes this hearing? What town rule or regulation controls the nature and conduct of the hearing, substantive and procedural?”

Ensuring that the town did have such a process in place was one of the more important recommendations the now defunct charter reform committee made last fall, according to Dan Norris, the former chairman.

“We reviewed the charters of probably 10 or so towns around New Hampshire and almost every one had very detailed conflict of interest provisions,” Norris said. “It was a unanimous decision that it would be important for Salem’s charter to deal with conflicts of interest at much greater detail.”

While the state statutes clearly outline what constitutes a violation of ethics, Norris said the statutes – as well as Salem’s charter – were silent on the procedural aspects of an ethical breach. The committee recommended the town spell out the procedure, which would include an investigation followed by a hearing. At that point the majority of the board could vote to vacate the seat, according to the report.

That recommendation never went before Town Meeting, as the board instead chose to let voters weigh in on whether or not to adopt a charter commission. At the time, it made more sense to create a body to study the possibilities for a new charter rather than to make piecemeal adjustments to the existing charter, according to Selectman Everett McBride.

Robert Campbell, chairman of the town’s recently formed Charter Commission, said any new document to go before voters would likely contain an ethics clause, but discussion on how that clause would read is not imminent.

“We haven’t gotten to the point to working to the details. The first thing we have to do is establish the form of (town) government and that section could go into any of them,” Campbell said. “It’s certainly not on the backburner. It’s just that one has to the plan to the meal first before one starts cooking the vegetables. It’s been on my list of things that we need to put in.”

Fellow commission member Stephen Campbell said that even if the new charter contained an ethics clause, it would not have helped the board avoid what he described as a “trainwreck” of a hearing.

“I think the charter should have something like, if you’re convicted of a crime than the Board of Selectmen can remove you because an independent judge or jury made a decision,” he said. “There is no way a Board of Selectman can be truly independent and honest because when you’re going through a judge, he hasn’t had any dealings with you. They all have relationships. I don’t think any changes we make to the charter would helped (Monday night).”

While the board took no action against Hargreaves, who also holds a seat on the commission, Hargreaves said there needs to be something outlined in the town charter. Though he does not know what that should be, he said he has an open mind.