In a tense Monday meeting, the Brentwood City Commission voted 4-2 to hire an outside attorney to review an ethics complaint against Commissioner Rhea Little and present its findings to the commission at a later date.
Commissioner Susannah Macmillan introduced the motion, which will see the hiring of an attorney to work with city attorney Kristen Corn “to review the ethics complaint in its entirety to see if a violation has occurred,” and to “present their findings to the commission in a future briefing for consideration.”
Vice Mayor Ken Travis seconded the motion, adding, “I think that takes the political part out of it,” a comment that received audible groans from some in the crowd of some 50 attendees.
“This is confusing, and so that is why I feel like this is a good alternative to us adjudicating it here, when we don't have all the information we need to adjudicate it,” Macmillan said, a position that Travis along with Mayor Mark Gorman and Commissioner Allison Spears ultimately agreed with in the meeting.
“I don't want to be one, especially during this time to say, does this have merit or not? I don't want it to be politicized,” Gorman said. “I would think that it would be best to get it to an outside, non-biased person to say, ‘hey, attorney, does this have merit?’ Yes or no, I don't want to be the one to communicate this – that's my personal preference.”
Following the meeting, Little, in conjunction with his lawyer, Jeff Moseley, issued a statement to the Williamson Scene in which he called the complaint and meeting a “total politically motivated orchestrated political attack.”
Moseley, senior member at Buerger, Moseley and Carson, also serves as counsel to the Williamson County Government.
Complaint Read Aloud
The meeting saw one resident, Melissa Geno, read the entirety of the complaint against Little during public comments, at the request of Brentwood resident Rebecca Martinez, who filed the complaint and “could not be here tonight.”
In February, Geno submitted her own ethics complaint against Commissioner Nelson Andrews, and Travis was also the subject of an ethics complaint from another citizen around the same time.
In a March 10 email to commissioners about those complaints obtained by the Williamson Scene, Corn said that “after being able to review both complaints in detail, it was apparent that no violations of the City's Ethics Code were alleged … and therefore, no action would be taken.”
As previously reported, Martinez argued in the March 31 ethics complaint that Little violated the state's sunshine law when he replied to the email and then requested that the city's IT department to recall the message out of the inboxes of his fellow commissioners.
Little said he made an error in clicking “reply all” instead of simply “reply” to the citizen he was attempting to reply to directly.
An April 7 email from Brentwood Technology Director Sarah VanWormer to the commission was included in the April 14 agenda reads in part, “since the recall feature is an existing function available to users within our email system, and emails are not permanently deleted during the process, I made the choice to assist with the request as I would every City of Brentwood user.”
Martinez alleged that Little's reply included “multiple false and intentionally misleading statements designed to create public discourse.” Her complaint is attached to the story so it can be read in full.
Martinez was the co-chair of the Brentwood Racquet Facility Ad Hoc Committee which studied and issued a report on the hotly-debated proposal to construct a racquetball facility in 2023. Little has been critical of the project, arguing that it's “non-essential” and has said it is being pushed by some commissioners without satisfactory input from the majority of citizens.
Several citizens spoke in support of Little during public comments with some noting his “integrity.” Geno was the only citizen to speak against Little.
“I've been here since 1988, and I've never seen anything in my life like what I've witnessed the last several months, and it is ridiculous,” resident George Buck said. “It has caused divisiveness within this community, within neighborhoods and within families, and it needs to end. It needs to end tonight.”
Commissioners Respond
The city's longest-serving commissioner, Anne Dunn, likened the meeting to the Salem Witch Trials, and called it a “shameful night for the city of Brentwood.”
“I've served on this board [for] 35 years, and I've never witnessed anything like what we're seeing tonight. The enthusiasm and zeal for investigating you is quite obvious up here to me,” Dunn said directly to Little.
“Rhea was tripping over himself trying to do the right thing not violate the Sunshine Law, and that's what they're accusing him of doing,” Dunn said.
Andrews added: “I understand the city attorney said that this is not the place to discuss open meetings [a state law], but there's nothing in that email [from Little] that we haven't discussed here in this commission chamber, many times, in terms of cost of the facilities, number of people, differences of perception on this.”
Dunn and Andrews were the two dissenting votes, and both questioned why the complaint was filed months after the alleged violation and two weeks before early voting was set to begin.
“I've noticed that this commission is continually deferring making a decision, always wanting more information, spending more city money, when sometimes it's furthering a separate agenda. You're keeping this alive, instead of clearing this good man's name, by having a headline, ‘city hires attorney to investigate Commissioner Little,’” Dunn continued. “Is that your goal, to drag this entire city through the mud for a campaign?”
Little abstained from voting on the ethics complaint. He made an argument in his April 7 letter which ultimately fell on deaf ears that Gorman and Spears, who are also running for reelection, should do the same – calling it a potential “political advantage” and “conflict of interest.”
“You don't have to look very far to see the timing,” Andrews said. “You don't have to dig very deep to see the people involved and the interests involved here, and I think for every reason that to stand up for what is good about Brentwood, this commission just needs to dismiss this without merit, as a political stunt, and not pretend that we're looking into it as a for real, substantial problem with ethics in our city.”
That statement was met with applause from much of the audience, including several who sported Rhea Little campaign reelection stickers.
Rhea Little's April 15 statement
“This was a total politically motivated orchestrated political attack, another example of the weaponization of law for political purposes,” Little said in his statement to the Williamson Scene. “We have four Commissioners that have been bloc voting for two and a half years and because they are the majority they will continue this outrage, but citizens can change that. ... It is my firm confidence that any reputable law firm chosen to review this will say the complaint is totally without merit."
Monday's meeting highlighted the confusion from the commission over the lack of details regarding the city's ethics policy, and as of now, it's unclear how long the process of hiring an outside attorney, who will act as the “ethics officer,” will take. It’s also unknown how long it will take for the commission to be presented with the findings of the independent investigation.
According to Brentwood Community Relations Director Charles Booth, Corn has already begun the process of finding outside counsel, who she will then present to the commission for their approval. Any cost of more than $25,000 to hire the "ethics officer" would require a vote from the commission, per the city charter.
It’s also unclear how the timing of any potential independent review may impact the May 6 election.
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.