Josh Cohn’s term as mayor is about to end, but his obsession with undermining the city’s Board of Ethics seems to have no limit.
That’s not only divisive and bad for Rye, it sets a bad example for other local leaders.
If you are fortunate enough to live in a community that has an Ethics Board — and not all New Yorkers are — you have a group of objective arbiters of how public officials should conduct themselves while doing their jobs. In Rye, appointments to the Ethics Board — made by the mayor with the approval of the council — are carefully vetted, and the members are all highly qualified for their positions.
So which members of the community are not objective arbiters of how pubic officials should behave?
Those public officials themselves.
The Ethics Board concluded on Feb. 13, 2023, that Cohn and his three council allies — known around town as “The Gang of Four” — should not consider a tree-cutting moratorium when someone wanted to clear trees on property next to Cohn’s house. But you don’t need to be an ethics expert to understand why what Cohn and his allies did might be a conflict of interest and unfair to the neighbor.
If officials are cited for ethical missteps, the response should be to apologize and pledge not to make the same mistake again. Or, if those officials strongly disagree with the Ethics Board’s conclusion, perhaps they might want to put that disagreement on the record, even if doing so makes them look obstinate or petulant.
Publicly disagreeing was the path that Mayor Cohn chose. He gave a long speech at a City Council meeting outlining why he and his council allies were right and the Ethics Board was wrong.
OK, not exactly statesman-like — so let’s move on.
But Cohn would not move on and still won’t. He seems intent on continuing down the same misguided path until the very end of his term on Dec. 31 and beyond.
As you may recall, The Gang of Four — Mayor Cohn, Deputy Mayor Julie Souza, Carolina Johnson, and Ben Stacks — somehow same to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to sue the Ethics Board. That meant that the mayor and three council members were suing their own city — the city they had been elected to serve. And then, also shockingly, they used their council majority to require the city to pay for both their lawsuit and the city’s defense against that lawsuit.
We had truly gone down the rabbit hole.
You can imagine the uproar. After Cohn and his Gang for Four were widely ridiculed, they dropped the suit.
Soon thereafter, one Cohn ally (Stacks) resigned and another (Johnson) announced she would not run for re-election (she ended up changing her mind, running as a write-in candidate and losing by a large margin). At that point, neither political party would support Cohn for re-election and he announced he would not run again.
But although Cohn and his council allies ultimately dropped their lawsuit, they did not drop the issue.
Cohn continues his campaign to review the city ethics code, even though the council has voted overwhelmingly against doing so. He went so far as to hire his own lawyer to review the matter and then he asked the city to pay that lawyer $10,000 to conduct a full review, an idea the council majority also wisely rejected.
It’s amazing that our outgoing mayor still does not see the irony of his response to being cited for a conflict of interest. He attacked the ethics officials who had reprimanded him, another conflict of interest. He and his allies sued their own city, another conflict of interest. They asked the city to pay for their lawsuit and the defense of that lawsuit, another conflict of interest. And now he has hired his own lawyer to review the city ethics code, yet another conflict of interest.
OK, so he’s not very self-aware, that’s human.
But his misguided attempts to clear his name have turned his ethical infraction into something much worse while hurting our city and setting a bad example for our public officials. A mayor and members of the City Council should show respect for those who might disagree with them — whether that’s the Ethics Board, their council colleagues, or members of the public and press.
Outgoing Republican Council Member Bill Henderson put it well at a recent council meeting.
“The fact that the council hasn’t worked together for the last year is the mayor’s fault, because he couldn’t rise above this whole thing and lead like a leader,” Henderson said. “Instead, he’s been fuming for two years over the fact that that he couldn’t bully the board of ethics to do what he wanted.
“It’s absolutely outrageous.”
As Cohn prepares to leave office, rather than creating an opportunity to celebrate his eight years of volunteer service to the community, he is devoting his final days to continuing to divide and attack the under-appreciated local ethics officials who were just doing their job.
That’s misguided and that’s not leadership.
Jon Elsen is the editor-in-chief and co-publisher of The Rye Record.
