KINGSTON – Brad Will, Kingston’s Third Ward alderman, might meet the Board of Ethics once again. He was found guilty of repeated violations in a report filed on Oct. 9, and fined $1,000 with censure, for conflict of interest involving the Pike Plan scandal.
Will
Champ-Doran
Now city officials are angry, and openly preparing to accuse him of further
conflict, for allegedly representing a client before the planning board
on October 13, discussing site plan changes for the new Irish Cultural
Center at 32 Abeel Street. Alderman Will also serves as the planning board’s
liaison to the city common council.
The official source of the new allegation is an abstract of the October 13 minutes, prepared this week by the planning board clerk. Mayor Shayne Gallo pulled no punches in an interview conducted on Sunday afternoon during the Burning of Kingston, where he roasted the embattled alderman.
“Mr. Will doesn’t get it,” said Gallo. “Unfortunately he’s consistently lacking transparency and veracity, and disregarding the law, rising above the law to try to benefit a friend or a crony,” Gallo said.
The outgoing mayor said the ethics law provides that as a liaison member of the city council, one cannot represent anyone before that board.
The mayor said for Will, after on instance, to engage in the same pattern of behavior, “blatantly and knowingly disregarding the ethics law, is just a sad commentary on the kind of government we have in this city. It’s really unacceptable,” Gallo said.
Key documents:
Finding
of Kingston Ethics Board
Brad
Will memo to Common Council President James Noble
Andrew Champ-Doran, Brad Will’s Independence Party opponent in
November’s election, agrees. It was Champ-Doran who originally filed
the first set of ethics charges against Will last January. Those charges
were later levied verbatim by the Pike Plan Commission.
Champ-Doran said that Will, his representative, is breaking the law.
“We want to make him stop breaking the law,” Champ-Doran said, claiming his motives weren’t political. “It’s clear from his letter to Jim Noble that Brad Will knows the law. He’s very specific in his letter; he takes a lot of time, sort of deconstructing the law and looking at it. He has a three-page addendum to his letter, describing more in depth about conflict of interest,” Champ-Doran noted.
During the secretive ethics board proceedings throughout September, Will refused to testify under oath, but stated through his defense attorney ignorance regarding his conflict restrictions. Champ-Duran countered that assertion by disclosing a January 2014 letter by Will, attempting unsuccessfully to levy similar ethics charges against Mayor Gallo.
“I believe they gave him a great deal of leeway. Brad Will cost the city something in the neighborhood of six or seven thousand dollars, in lawyer fees and transcription fees. Only paying back a thousand dollars to the city is, I think, a little light,” Champ-Doran added.
Alderman Will was unavailable for comment over the weekend. Messages were left on his voice mail. Previously he refused comment on the matter of ethics on several other occasions.
