For several years now, Denton’s Board of Ethics has been in the process of updating the city’s ethics ordinance, which has been rife with issues since its passage in 2017. Critics claim city leaders didn’t follow the standard ethics model used across the state but instead created a Frankenstein version that has been haunting the board for years.
Denton’s ethics code has been called
unique, but not in a good way, and an “embarrassment” by David Zoltner, a current board member and longtime critic, in part due to the burden of proof requirement. It requires complainants to become what Zoltner called “amateur prosecutors” and prove their case at a public hearing.
In early February, the Board of Ethics recommended by a 4-0 vote (with one member absent and two seats unappointed) for the council to repeal and replace
the conflict of interest section and eliminate the burden of proof in the ethics ordinance and adjust the board’s rules of procedure as needed.
They were also seeking to expand the time period for a conflict of interest to occur, from only during the “pending matter” to “any time an official is taking or failing to take an action using their official position or office that would result in a personal or financial benefit not shared
with the public,” according to the June 4 staff presentation.
A council majority declined to give direction for staff to implement those changes in early June.
“[They] were rejected by council due to concerns that the ethics complaint process may be used inappropriately,” Madison Rorschach, a city auditor and staff liaison, told board members at their meeting Monday.
Now Board of Ethics members must find a way to convince the council that changes to the conflict of interest and the burden of proof sections not only are needed but also follow the model ethics code used by other Texas cities and around the country.
It’s an issue that
Zoltner threatened to resign over Monday.
“I don’t know where we go from here, quite honestly,” Zoltner told board members at the meeting. “I thought if anything should be easily dispatched, it would be this whole burden of proof, that took a code and weaponized it against citizens who might dare to file a complaint. If we can’t repair or get rid of that burden of proof, I don’t know where we go from here.
“There are model codes all across the United States and the state of Texas. I don’t understand why we are at this point right now, that we have to defend stuff that is working everywhere else except in Denton.”
The Board of Ethics plans to take another look at the conflict of interest and burden of proof sections at the next meeting in August. Several changes were recommended, including updates
to the code’s personal benefits section — by adding domestic partners and foster children and removing spouses’ first cousins, great-grandparents or great-grandchildren.
Board Chair Annetta Ramsay said they will clean up what one council member called “wordsmithing” and make the changes more broad and general, though Ramsay fears it may not help convince the council to implement those changes.
The problem is that in most cities when a complaint is made, Ramsay said, it is investigated first and then, if found credible, the city or the ethics board will hold a hearing. The complainant is known, but they are not required to prosecute the case.
“We are the only place in the state and probably the only place in the country where the burden of proof rests with the complainant,” Ramsay said.
The ethics ordinance provides guidelines and rules for certain city officials such as council members and offers a mechanism for holding them accountable, according to the June 4 staff presentation to the council.
The current conflicts of interests section is complicated to navigate and understand, and it depends on how much stake, share, equitable interests or involvement a
council member has before it is violated.
It’s based on percentages such as ownership of 5% or more voting shares or stock in a business entity — or ownership of more than $600 of the fair market value of a business entity.
A panel, made up of three board members, uses the ordinance to issue advisory opinions based on questions by council members.
Since August 2021, the board has issued 11 opinions related to whether a council member may be violating the ethics code.
For example, in 2018, then-Mayor Chris Watts wondered if there was a conflict with him voting on the Oak/Gateway Small Area Plan because he owned “substantial
interests in real estate property” located within the boundaries of the small area plan, according to an advisory opinion by the ethics panel.
In the 2018 advisory opinion, then-council member Jesse Davis, who served as the chair of the ethics board at the time, wrote that Watts didn’t have to file a conflict of interest to deliberate or vote on the small area plan since the plan wasn’t considered a pending matter under the ethics
ordinance.
Over the years, a few ethics complaints have been filed against council members. An ethics complaint against two council members was filed by a former ethics board member while he was still serving on the board, and another was filed by a local business owner against a council member who was seeking office shortly before the May 2022 election.
In May 2019,
then-council member Deb Armintor was found in violation of the code over a polling location issue at the University of North Texas due to her employment connection to the university. Armintor claimed that her vote on the polling location didn’t violate the code.
Council member Paul Meltzer found himself at a
hearing with the Board of Ethics in 2022 over the ethics complaint filed by a local business owner.
The complaint was eventually ruled frivolous after the election, but Meltzer claimed the damage to his campaign had already been done since the confidential complaint was leaked to the public before the board ruled it was frivolous shortly after the May 2022 election.
“The
intention appears to have been to distract voters from the fact that my opponent had taken tens of thousands of dollars from developer interests, as attested in notarized documents, by focusing on the notary seal,” Meltzer told the Record-Chronicle in late May 2022.
Those notarized documents are campaign finance reports, which are available online at www.cityofdenton.com/421/Vote.
On Monday, Board of Ethics members wondered why the council didn’t trust their recommendations since they were appointed by council members to serve. They said they had spent hours deliberating changes over the course of several months.
They stressed that these changes were not intended to be a
burden on council members but were to simply allow for transparency in the local government.
“I was extremely discouraged by the results of that work session,” board member Dustin Pavelek told board members. “I was discouraged by the comments that a lot of council members made. I am hopeful that we can come up with something that we can clean up some of the issues in our ordinance. We don’t spend hours and hours in this room to fix
something broken, only to have our recommendations almost completely ignored.
“If we can’t fix the conflict of interest and get a council to agree to it, I’m not sure what we are doing in these meetings.”
Board member Patricia Reinke sensed a palpable fear among council members.
“They are afraid that we are out to get them when we’re trying to
protect them from frivolous accusations at election time,” Reinke said. “Why do they fear us? That is not what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to increase transparency.”
Board members discussed possibly hosting a joint meeting with council members, similar to what the Planning and Zoning Commission does, and work on revisions with council members.
Instead of discussing what
they don’t want to see, board members want to discuss what the council does want to see in a model ethics code that holds council members accountable and keeps them transparent. Instead, the current code, Zoltner wrote in an opinion column for the Record-Chronicle, has “numerous loopholes” that “allow local officials to wink and move on.”
Another option supported by a few board members involves hiring a consultant to explain to council members why the changes they spent hours deliberating over the past several months need
to be approved.
“[We need] someone who will help them understand that you are not going to have 92 bullet points up and down an ethics code and cover every possible scenario where someone can step over the line,” Zoltner said Monday. “That’s not going to happen ever, and if that’s their goal, we’re wasting time.
“We’re not the first city in the state of Texas to pass an ethics code. This has been done before,
yet this council is acting like it’s the first time ever. I don’t know how to fix that other than to get some help.”
