Mayor Josh Cohn is recommending the City Council hire an outside lawyer to review the Board of Ethics, reigniting a two-year-old controversy that ultimately led Cohn and three of his colleagues to launch a stunning lawsuit against the city.
Renewing his claims that the ethics board politicized itself by launching an unlawful investigation into a 2023 emergency meeting he had called for, Cohn tried to bolster his argument at the May 7 council meeting by referring to an opinion released by the New York Conference of Mayors that he believes contradicts the board’s actions.
The mayor urged the council to conduct an outside review of the city’s code of ethics and the ethics board’s role to prevent what he saw as overreach.
“In any case, Rye at least needs to provide guidelines to our Board of Ethics and a refresh to our Code of Ethics to ensure that nothing like this happens again,” said Cohn, who is set to leave office at the end of the year.
Republican Councilman Bill Henderson rejected Cohn’s impression of the NYCOM opinion, arguing the matter was old news and no longer worth revisiting.
“I don’t think anyone is interested in talking more about this, I thought this was in the past,” shot back Henderson, who is running for mayor.
“If you want to do a review of the processes of the Board of Ethics independent, that’s fine,” he added. “If you want to open up this old wound and go into it again and say ‘what they did was wrong and I was right,’ I don’t think it’s productive.”
Cohn, who is politically unaffiliated, solicited the NYCOM opinion, writing a detailed inquiry to the state association about his dealings with the ethics board, which had suggested the mayor and his cohorts had acted inappropriately.
NYCOM’s response letter, which was sent to Cohn in January, provided a general overview and guidance as to the powers and procedures of ethics boards.
The opinion, however, noted that it was unable to weigh in on specific issues in Rye.
“While this opinion of the NYCOM staff will discuss general recommendations regarding board of ethics’ powers and procedures, it will not provide interpretations of the City’s specific code provisions nor will it weigh-in on specific findings or determinations of the City of Rye’s board of ethics,” NYCOM General Counsel Wade Beltrano wrote in the letter.
Beltrano also said that NYCOM staff wasn’t privy to all of the ethics board’s proceedings.
Democratic Councilman Josh Nathan said he didn’t think the Board of Ethics committed any wrongdoing, but he also was open to a review of the city’s code of ethics as long as that process did not dig up the past, calling the ordeal a “sore wound” that ripped apart the council and community.
Cohn alleged the city Board of Ethics “unlawfully exceeded its authority” in February 2023 when the advisory body concluded that he, current Democratic Deputy Mayor Julie Souza, and then council members Carolina Johnson and Ben Stacks had acted improperly by attending and voting at an emergency meeting to expedite a tree-clearing moratorium to prevent the cutting of trees near Cohn’s home.
“Rye’s Board of Ethics is authorized only to respond to questions raised by officials as to their own conduct. This is not what it did,” Cohn said. “We’ve been misadvised in thinking it has investigative authority or competence. It is not by law, nor is it capable of being, the ethics police some may wish it to be.”
The board’s opinion had been spurred by a request from Henderson, Nathan, and former Councilwoman Lori Fontanes, a Democrat, regarding the special meeting, which they saw as benefitting Cohn personally.
At the time of the controversy, the Board of Ethics was made up of Elizabeth Griffins Matthews, former mayor Ted Dunn, and Edward Stein. Ted Livingston has since replaced Dunn on the board.
“It was fracturing, it was damaging, it was hurtful,” Souza said of the ethics board opinion. “Can we fix it? Can we acknowledge that that was not our best? That’s not what we want to be in the future.”
After the ethics board ruling, Cohn and the three other council members made the unusual decision to sue the city in June 2023, and approved the allocation of money to both pursue the lawsuit and defende against it. They eventually dropped the lawsuit following significant backlash from the community.
While Cohn argued that the ethics board had conducted an investigation, some on the council at the time, including Henderson, countered that it was not an investigation, but rather non-legally binding ethics advice.
“It was a terrible moment for this council. I think folks’ passions might have gotten ahead of procedure,” said Nathan, who is also running for mayor. “At this point it was two years ago, we’ve accomplished so much since then.”
He added that re-litigating the controversy would not be productive.
It is unclear if Cohn’s proposal will be brought to a vote by the City Council.
