More Transparency is Needed in Yorktown Ethics Code Practices

It has been nearly a full year since the Yorktown Town Board commissioned the firm Bleakley Platt & Schmidt as special counsel to investigate the circumstances surrounding the leak of a report issued by our own Board of Ethics. Additionally, this firm was directed to review our existing ethics charter and make recommendations for improvement. All of this was done in response to a complaint I filed in November 2020 alleging a conflict-of-interest violation by a member of the Yorktown Planning Board.

As of this writing, there has been no further mention of this subject from our town government. The question then is whether there was ever any true intention to get to the truth in this matter, or if this was simply a maneuver intended to bury the issue and move on.

Indeed, perhaps our ethics code is more than adequate as is and revisions are not needed. As stated in Yorktown’s Rules for Ethical Conduct, Section 45-5: “No Town official or employee shall engage in any business or profession or accept private employment or render any service for private interests which creates a conflict with his or her official duties.” It should be obvious to any town official that their access to privileged information is not for personal financial gain.

Rather than rewriting the law, I suspect that the true problem lies in enforcement and administration. It is not enough to have a succinct code of ethics; officials, employees, volunteers and advisory board members should be given mandatory ethics training and held accountable for infractions.

I urge the Town Board to enact a sustained effort to implement ethical standards and establish clear guidelines to uphold them. Instead, we now have an unfortunate situation, compounded by an administration more interested in avoiding scandal than in seeking transparency.

Tim Glass
Yorktown Heights

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