Mayor Josh Cohn and Deputy Mayor Julie Souza won’t get their much-desired formal ethics code review before they exit the City Council later this month, after a plan to retain a high-powered lawyer was overwhelmingly shot down by fellow council members.
Their proposal for the city to hire attorney Steven Leventhal – on the table since the spring – only garnered attention recently after Cohn engaged the municipal attorney on his own dime for an informal review of the nearly 60-year-old ethics code, coupled with an analysis of an opinion rendered by the city’s ethics board over a tree-cutting controversy in 2023.
The bipartisan council majority, with almost no discussion, voted Leventhal’s hiring down 4-2 – leaving Cohn and Souza distraught at the dais.
Republican Councilman Keith Cunningham was absent from the Dec. 3 meeting.
The proposal, Cohn said, called for a confidential, forward-looking review “without reference to 2023” of the entire city ethics code for no more than $10,000.
Following the loss, the mayor expressed criticism of his colleagues.
“Of course I’m disappointed,” Cohn told The Record. “My colleagues who refuse ethics code review offer only vague and implausible excuses while failing to provide good reasons. Though I expected that’s what they would do, I’d love to see them drop their self-interest and start taking their jobs seriously.”
The mayor said he will continue to advocate for an ethics review, though he has not yet outlined a plan.
For more than a year, Cohn has repeatedly expressed his indignation with a February 2023 advisory opinion of the city Board of Ethics that found the mayor, who is politically unaffiliated, Souza, a Democrat, and former council members Carolina Johnson and Ben Stacks had acted improperly by calling for an emergency meeting and voting to expedite a tree-clearing moratorium in an effort to prevent the removal of trees near Cohn’s Green Avenue home.
The mayor announced last month that he had paid Leventhal more than $2,500 out of his own pocket to review the city’s ethics code, while claiming that the review vindicated him.
“It would be wholly disingenuous to say that our board of ethics does not require a review,” Souza told her council colleagues. “I think that is indisputable, given the damage that was caused. … So voting against protecting volunteers in the city and staff members of the city is actually an alarming thing to see of people who will continue to serve in this role, and that concerns me very much.
“I also think that it’s politically motivated — if I’m being honest — and the only reason not to do it is because [the mayor and I are] still sitting here, and you don’t want to give the satisfaction to the people who were harmed.”
Mayor-elect Josh Nathan, a Democrat, said he read Leventhal’s letter, as he promised Souza he would when the issue was broached at last month’s council meeting.
Photo Alison Rodilosso
“I think the narratives in here and in the opinion that Leventhal wrote are different from the experience we had,” Nathan said. “He’s also Mayor Cohn’s lawyer, so I can’t get my head around that conflict.”
Cohn claimed Leventhal has no conflict of interest and described Nathan’s reference to a different “narrative” as “deliberately nonspecific and opaque.”
Prior to the council’s vote, the most outspoken on the topic was former Republican Councilman Terry McCartney, who backed revising the ethics code.
The ethics board, McCartney claimed, ceased to be a resource after issuing its advisory opinion in February 2023.
“It became judge and jury and issued findings of supposed violations against people who didn’t ask, and sadly, the reputations of those good people were unfairly impugned,” he added.
McCartney, an ex-Marine who served one term in elected office, said he read Leventhal’s letter and called it “a good start.”
“I think his work should not be wasted,” he said.
Nathan could not be reached by The Record for additional comment.
