Ethics Board: Mayor French Did Not Receive Preferential Treatment

One day after convening to determine whether or not Mayor Doug French received preferential treatment from City employees with regard to STAR exemptions and potential building violations at his 13 Richard Place property, the Board of Ethics released their decision in the form of approved meeting minutes.

One day after convening to determine whether or not Mayor Doug French received preferential treatment from City employees with regard to STAR exemptions and potential building violations at his 13 Richard Place property, the Board of Ethics released their decision in the form of approved meeting minutes.

This time there was no “punting” of the questions.

In the end, they determined the Mayor did not receive preferential treatment in either case, ruling that other homeowners are dealt with in the same manner. Deputy Mayor Peter Jovanovich referred the matter back to the Board of Ethics at the January 25 City Council meeting.

Reached for comment, Mayor French had this to say: “Finally. Finally, someone took the time to look at the facts and understand the issue — and when they did, they found that not only did the Mayor (I was in 3rd grade at the time) and City staff do nothing wrong, but that these issues are not unique and every situation is treated the same way. The only difference is how I handled the situation which is to immediately correct any mistakes even though they weren’t mine. The people of Rye have been very supportive and saw this for what it was. The most disappointing aspect though has been how uninformed the media and some members of the Council were on the facts, and how quickly they passed judgment in-line with that of our accusers Ray Tartaglione of Purchase and Leon Sculti of Rye without ever having spoken to me or City staff about the facts.”

Mayor French’s fellow Councilmember, Joe Sack, saw the results differently: “Unfortunately yet predictably, the flawed process used to arrive at this outcome will only cast even more doubt on the issue, rather than help us to move on from this unwanted distraction. On top of it all, we still don’t know the facts, which is why we still need an independent investigation so we can find out what happened from an unimpeachable source, make our own judgments, and put this matter behind us. This course will result in a credible process, which will produce fair results for everyone involved, including the Mayor. The regrettable comments by the Mayor at this point do not help in that regard. For other members of the Council, we did not seek out this problem, but now we are obligated to fix it. We owe it to the public and to the integrity of the process to get this right.”

Below are the approved minutes of the February 2 Board of Ethics meeting: