Ethics Board members serve staggered terms of three years each. No more than two of the members may be enrolled voters of the same political party, and no more than one member may be an officer or employee of the town. The ethics law can be viewed or downloaded from the Laws link on the town website, woodstockny.org.
Executive session
The second question, concerning the Ethics Board’s secrecy, emerged from the circumstances surrounding McKenna’s appearance at the board’s March 18 hearing of his case. A provision of the ethics law stipulates that no meeting or proceeding of the board concerning misconduct by a town officer or employee shall be open to the public, except upon the request of that individual or as required by state or federal law. McKenna requested that his hearing be open to the public. He invited reporters from Woodstock Times and another newspaper to attend the session.
This reporter duly appeared for the 6:45 p.m. hearing, which took place at the town highway garage in Bearsville, where the ethics panel has recently held its meetings. (The other reporter did not appear.) Also in attendance were McKenna and three of the Ethics Board’s five members: Teri Reynolds, the board’s chair; Fran Breitkopf, the vice chair; and Toby Heilbrunn. A fourth board member, Allison West, was absent, while the panel’s fifth seat is vacant following the recent resignation of Michael Goodman.
The ethics officials informed Woodstock Times that, pursuant to an opinion from Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government, the board would vote to conduct the hearing in an executive session that would be closed to the public, including the press. After providing McKenna and this reporter with copies of the relevant section of the state’s Open Meetings Law, the board voted unanimously to adjourn to the private setting and then did so.
Whether the Ethics Board proceeded legally, at least on technical grounds, remains unclear. Section 105 of the Open Meetings Law specifies eight purposes for which a “public body” may conduct an executive session. The ethics panel, however, stated no reason for its action. In a March 19 interview, Reynolds declined to specify which of the eight listed purposes applied to the board’s decision, adding that more than one of the approved purposes might have applied.
“I think that it is sufficient (reason) to conduct interviews with people of interest regarding our case,” she said. “We felt there were several reasons. We are investigating — fact finding, talking to Bill McKenna and other people, and gathering information to see if the inquiry has any basis.” Calls seeking comment from Freeman on March 20 were not immediately returned.
Meeting minutes
Another facet of the Ethics Board’s procedures came into question at the Town Board’s March 12 meeting when the town clerk, Jackie Earley, remarked that for years the ethics panel had failed to respond to her requests for minutes of their meetings. Volunteer boards and commissions provide minutes of their meetings in part, said Earley, so that Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests by the public can be accommodated.
In the recent interview Reynolds sought to correct the impression that the Ethics Board had ignored requests for minutes during her tenure. “It was quite a shock for all of us,” said the chair of the ethics panel. “Over the four years that I have been on the Ethics Board, we have never been asked to provide minutes of our regular meetings. I called two or three previous (chairs), and none remembered ever being notified by Jackie of (such a) need. I was very disappointed and sad to hear that because it came as a surprise. I like Jackie, who does a wonderful, wonderful job for the town, but we were all in shock.”
Reynolds added that she and Earley had resolved the matter in an ensuing e-mail exchange, with the town clerk acknowledging that her public statement about requests for minutes applied only to previous Ethics Boards and not to the current panel. In a brief interview on March 19, Earley confirmed the substance of that exchange but declined to comment on Reynolds’s communication with previous ethics chairs, observing only that the whereabouts of minutes from years past remained unknown to her.
Reynolds reported that the Ethics Board had responded promptly on its own to a recent FOIL request. She noted, however, that no minutes had been kept of the March 18 executive session with McKenna.
