North Castle Looks to Shore Up Ethics Code With Proposed Revisions
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The North Castle Town Board last week largely favored a set of recommendations from the Board of Ethics that would bolster the municipality’s ethics code to improve transparency and public confidence in local government.
Board of Ethics Chair Brett Summers outlined a handful of proposed revisions and additions, one of which prevents any Town Board member, department head or the town attorney from holding an office, leadership position or be a voting member of a town political committee.
Disclosure and recusal would also be required for any Town Board member who received an aggregate campaign contribution of more than $500 or an equivalent amount in goods or services from a donor who has an application or matter before them. Under the current code, only disclosure is required.
Other proposed revisions require applicants coming before the Town Board to disclose in writing if they have contributed more than $500 to a member’s campaign; prohibiting members of a board or committee that oversees a land use application to professionally represent a third party before one of those boards; and failure to disclose a campaign finance disclosure statement would be considered a violation of the Code of Ethics.
Summers said the efforts to continually strengthen the code is to employ best practices and educate the public that the town is striving to create a healthy function that is free from questionable entanglements.
“Our board has a general philosophy of continuous improvement, so during the last year we surveyed many municipal ethics codes, some from around the state and many from other Westchester communities,” Summers said. “We identified and refined those that we judged would improve our ethics function without undue burden. We also considered amendments to some of our existing code provisions that had particular relevance to issues that have been identified in town.”
Although last week’s work session discussion did not point to any specific examples of ethics issues, last year controversy was sparked when Supervisor Joseph Rende eventually disclosed that the law practice of Town Attorney Roland Baroni was merging with the law firm that represented Rende post-election over disputed absentee ballots in an extremely close election.
Town Board members were receptive to the recommendations, with Rende thanking the Board of Ethics for their work.
“The main purpose of this is to ensure that the people sitting here and the people ultimately making decisions on half of all of the residents of the community are behaving and acting and disclosing in an ethical way,” Rende said.
However, there were a few points that officials wanted clarified before the public hearing opens.
Most notably, was whether the town should pursue or has the authority to prohibit a Town Board member or the head of a department from serving as a leader or voting member of a town political committee. Rende mentioned that only judges have that requirement in most jurisdictions.
“I don’t see how you can take away someone’s right to be a voting member of a political party,” he said.
The Board of Ethics intends to research whether that is permissible under the law.
Another was an inquiry as to why it would be an applicant’s responsibility to disclose his contributions. Summers responded that it served as a check and balance, in case one party did not adhere to the process.
There was also discussion relating to when the revised code would go into effect should it be approved by the Town Board. Councilman Matt Milim, who said he agreed with nearly all of the proposals, suggested that it should apply to anyone running in this year’s election for two board seats and the supervisor’s post and all subsequent elections, but not be retroactive because neither previous candidates nor the donors could have known.
“I think in fairness, because people didn’t know these rules when they were campaigning, when they were taking campaign contributions, developers and candidates,” Milim said. “I think in fairness, the right thing to do is have it start after the next election, so people can plan for it.”
Councilman Saleem Hussain said one concern he had was if the bolstered code results in more recusals, whether that impair the Town Board’s ability to complete business. If the board fails to achieve a quorum because of recusals then the recusals are nullified, Summers mentioned.
Hussain also applauded the efforts of the Board of Ethics, ensuring it “as a way to make sure that our town can build more and more trust in us as a board because having these in place helps our residents know that we’re working with them on a more and more construct of ethics.”
The Board of Ethics is scheduled to meet Feb. 3 to review language and some of the concerns raised, and return them to the Town Board in time to resolution scheduled a hearing at its Feb. 12 meeting.
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/
