City Commissioners will be asked this week to set a public hearing for May 20 on whether the city should dissolve its ethics committee.

Commissioners established the ethics committee in 2017 to ensure city officers and employees are performing their duties in compliance with the provisions of state law and city code. They made the move after conflict of issues in that year’s Community Development Block Grant funding allocation process.

According to the city staff report for the May 6 meeting, commissioners are being asked to consider dissolving the ethics committee and instead adopt “a more objective and legally efficient process by deferring all ethics complaints directly to the Cascade County attorney, consistent with state law. This approach would eliminate internal conflicts, streamline the process, and reduce the legal and administrative burden currently borne by city staff.”

Ethics committee deems complaint against Tryon unsubstantiated [2023]

The ethics committee was established to assess whether ethics complaints appear substantiated before referring them to the county attorney.

Since its creation in 2017, the committee has heard three complaints, none of which it referred to the county attorney.

One of the complaints filed against city officials pertaining to the effort to establish a National Heritage Area also included a complaint against former County Commissioner Jane Weber. That portion of the complaint was forwarded to the county as it was outside the city’s purview.

According to city staff, each of those three complaints heard by the ethics committee “consumed significant legal and staff resources.”

City ethics committee finds complaints regarding heritage area unsubstantiated [2021]

Challenges with the current ethics committee model, according to city staff, include:

• the city attorney can be put in “the ethically precarious role of referring complaints involving elected officials with whom they regularly work”
• the city manager can’t refer complaints against commissioners “without jeopardizing professional relationships”
• “additional legal costs and administrative demands have been realized, with each hearing requiring outside legal counsel due to inherent conflicts of interest”

City staff said the most recent ethics complaint, filed against Commissioner Rick Tryon in 2023, cost nearly $4,900 in outside legal fees.

Dissolving the ethics committee would eliminate the need to legally staff the hearings, a cost savings of about $4,000 to $5,000 per incident, according to staff.

Doyon told The Electric on May 5 that there are no pending ethics complaints.

Staff wrote in their agenda report that alternatives include minor improvements to the existing ethics committee such as revised submittal forms; eliminating the committee and referring all complaints to the Cascade County attorney; or establishing a new ethics review panel comprised of external appointees, which would still require staff time and potential legal counsel.

Commission considering changes to city ethics committee rules [2019]

City staff is recommending dissolution of the committee and referring all complaints to the county attorney.

In a March 26 memo to commissioners, City Manager Greg Doyon wrote that commissioners had asked over the last year to consider alternatives to the ethics committee.

Doyon wrote that each complaint was different, but had some commonalities:

• ethics complaints take up a significant amount of staff time and legal department resources
• ethics complaints require that the committee retain a staff attorney as the city attorney or designee usually represents the alleged violator
• most of the complaints were filed against elected officials
• the city attorney serves at the pleasure of the city manager and is also a member of the executive team that advises commissioners the most.

Commissioners created the ethics committee after the city’s 2017 Community Development Block Grant allocation process was plagued with conflict of interest issues.

City staff recommending changes to ethics committee procedure; one commissioner said committee should be dissolved [2019]

That year, there were complaints about Tracy Houck’s involvement as a city commissioner and Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art director at the time, as well as former Commissioner Bill Bronson since his wife worked for NeighborWorks Great Falls at the time, which was receiving funding, among other issues.

Rick Tryon was a vocal critic of the process at the time, before being elected in November 2019 to assume office in 2020.

Complaints from locals made their way to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, prompting a more thorough review from HUD, which declined funding for Paris Gibson Square and later pulled funding from NWGF, Great Falls Development Authority, Habitat for Humanity and Rural Dynamics, Inc.

City ethics committee hears first complaint regarding Houck’s social media post [2019]

The city made substantial changes to the CDBG funding process following the 2017 round, removing the former council that reviewed the funding requests and often included members of the nonprofit community.

HUD closed the city’s case in 2018 and the city continued revising its CDBG funding process, which is reviewed by HUD through the standard process of submitting five-year plans, annual action plans and citizen participation plans.

HUD closed case with city over CDBG conflicts of interest [2018]

“While very well intended, the current ethics complaint process inadvertently created real conflicts between the city manager, city attorney and city commission. I would argue that in some cases this would create unnecessary tension with other executive team members without having a referral process that is handled by a third party objectively,” Doyon wrote.

Ethics provisions updates back on City Commission agenda [2017]

Some of those issues were primarily due to former city attorneys stepping in, creating an additional and unwritten part of the process by examining complaints to determine whether to refer them to the ethics committee, in some cases, “because the facts alleged by the complainant, even if true, would not constitute an ethics violation,” Doyon wrote. “While I understand the desire to do this, it simply created an expectation that the city attorney would pass initial judgment on the complaint, which is not part of the ordinance.”

City staff propose changes to ethics policies, creation of ethics board in response to conflict of interest issues [2017]

Doyon detailed the costs of the three ethics complaints reviewed by the committee in his memo:

• Feb. 6, 2019, Jeni Dodd v. Tracy Houck: preparation, meeting, development of findings: $3,604
• Feb. 3, 2021, Jeni Dodd v. city staff, City-County Historic Preservation Commission, Big Sky National Heritage Area: $4,616.27
• Nov. 23, 2023: Jasmine Taylor v. Rick Tryon: $4,886.01

Conflict of interest concerns plague this year’s CDBG allocation decisions [2017]

When a complaint is filed against a commissioner, I am not going to be the appropriate person to refer a complaint–for obvious reasons. Under the current provisions, the city attorney does the referring. Although the city attorney does not answer to the city commission directly, the city attorney works very closely with the governing body for legal advice and policy direction,” Doyon wrote in his March memo to commissioners. “So, while I get to avoid potentially damaging my employer/employee relationship with the commission by not referring my boss/bosses to the ethics committee, the city attorney does not enjoy the same benefit. The city attorney is a trusted advisor to the commission on all legal matters. The potential of irreparably damaging that attorney-client relationship is very high as ‘the next’ referring agent in the current process.”