3 ethics complaints delayed due to lawsuit

Published 1:30 am Thursday, June 24, 2021

Ethics complaints have been filed against three Island Center Committee members.

Resident Lisa Neal filed the complaints, saying the three didn’t make others aware of their conflicts of interest.

However, the Ethics Board Monday decided not to address the complaints because of pending litigation.

While Neal’s lawsuit against the city is not directly related to her ethics complaints, the issues are close enough that the board decided to delay any action.

“The subject is similar enough,” said Tyler Weaver, chair of the board.

Board member Dona Keating added: “I think there are substantial similarities. We need to allow the litigation to play out.”

Weaver said it’s not the job of the Ethics Board to provide information that could be used in another case. He said the lawsuit needs to be judged on its own merits.

Board member Karen Anderson said it’s too bad the complaints weren’t filed months ago instead of right after the lawsuit was revised.

“It puts us in a really tough spot,” she said, adding if they decided for the complainant, which they very well could, it could then become part of the lawsuit.

Anderson added that it’s too bad they can’t look at the issue because there are some important lessons to be learned from the complaints that could help others in the future.

“The onus is on us to err on the side of caution,” board member Jim Cash said.

Neal’s complaint against Island Center committee member Scott Anderson says he should have made the committee aware that his property would be upzoned as part of the decision, making it more valuable.

It says the same thing basically about property owned by Donna Harui.

The complaint against Maradel Gale says she has a “private interest” in seeing Island Center planned/developed/densified by having Anderson’s property upzoned.

Harui responded to the complaint by saying since the committee’s votes are only “advisory” that she did not have to disclose the potential benefit of a Bainbridge Gardens upzone.

Neal responded saying if that’s the case why would advisory committee members be asked each meeting to announce if they have a conflict of interest?

Scott Anderson’s response to the complaint against him was similar to Harui’s. His land is near the four-way stop at Miller and New Brooklyn, behind Jerry’s Auto and Bainbridge Rental.

Both were able to vote on the upzoning of their properties. Both say everyone knew they owned the properties before even being named to the committee.

Neal says their two votes were decisive in the split decision by the committee.

Gale’s response says she has no property at Island Center. However, she was nominated by Anderson to chair the committee. Anderson first requested the upzone when Gale was a planning commissioner in 2015. At a meeting, she said she “wished she could have helped him.”

Neal says while Gale may not have a “financial” interest she did have a “private interest” in the proceedings that was not disclosed.

Neal, who was a member of the committee at first, says she was removed in 2018 in part because of her complaints regarding the lack of disclosure of conflicts of interest. She raised other complaints, such as the city having too much pro-development power over the committee. She has since sued the city of Bainbridge Island for defamation.

An interesting aside to the main discussion was another one regarding Neal’s request to have Keating recuse herself from voting on the complaints. It suggests that Keating’s husband, Charles, has in public said he is against Neal becoming a member of the ethics board. As a result, Neal fears Dona Keating might not treat her fairly.

To which Karen Anderson said it “was like stepping back into the 19th or 20th century,” when a wife doesn’t have her own opinion.

Dona Keating added that Neal’s request “does strike me, unfortunately, as being sexist, and even a little racist, you know, as women of color, and black women in particular, we’re always treated as if we’re not as professional or not as intelligent or not as capable as our white counterparts.”

Cash added that he found it interesting that in today’s world an independent person would not think another woman would be able to think for herself.

Also at the online meeting, Karen Anderson was thanked for serving on the board. “Being on the ethics board was not what I expected,” she said, adding, “Life does not stop at 80,” and she plans to attend college online and get a degree on aging.