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Council dismisses ethics complaint against Councilor Joe Latino after law department says no actionable claim
Summary
An ethics complaint filed by a union representative was presented to the council and the city attorney said it did not state an actionable violation of the city's ethics code; the council moved to dismiss the complaint and voted 5-1 to do so after debate about power differentials and whether the code should be changed.
The council received an ethics complaint filed Oct. 21 by Alice Grimm, president of the paging union, alleging conduct by Councilor Joe Latino. The city attorney presented a confidential legal memo and advised that, assuming the allegations in the complaint are true, the claim nonetheless fails to state a violation of the municipal code of ethics as currently written because it does not allege a breach that the code treats as actionable (such as a financial conflict or a specific breach of fiduciary duty).
Council debate split along lines of legal sufficiency and broader questions of ethics and employee treatment. Some councilors said the complaint was unsubstantiated or outside the scope of the ethics code, while others — including councilors who emphasized concern for city employees — said the reported conduct raised serious concerns about employees’ experience at work and suggested the code may not capture the full range of conduct citizens and employees consider unethical.
A motion to dismiss the complaint passed 5-1. Councilors who favor revisiting the ethics code suggested a future review of the code’s scope and complaint screening process; some members urged using an independent ethics reviewer to avoid politicized complaints in the future.
