{"id":74064,"date":"2019-08-20T19:48:33","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T01:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/second-ethics-complaint-filed-with-city-of-durango\/"},"modified":"2019-08-21T01:48:33","modified_gmt":"2019-08-21T01:48:33","slug":"second-ethics-complaint-filed-with-city-of-durango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/second-ethics-complaint-filed-with-city-of-durango\/","title":{"rendered":"Second ethics complaint filed with city of Durango"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The city of Durango has received two ethics complaints within less than a month. The Board of Ethics will screen both complaints. In the meantime, the city is not releasing any information about the nature of the complaints.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

An ethics complaint was filed this week with the Durango Clerk\u2019s Office, the second allegation of wrongdoing in less than a month.<\/p>\n

The two complaints \u2013 one filed Aug. 2 and the second submitted Monday \u2013 are the first the city\u2019s Board of Ethics has had to review since 2016, when it dismissed allegations against former City Councilor Sweetie Marbury<\/a>, said Deputy City Clerk Chris Vicari.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite rare for the city of Durango,\u201d she said of formal ethics violations.<\/p>\n

The Durango Herald<\/em> has filed open-records requests seeking access to both complaints. The city denied the Herald\u2019s first request for access to the Aug. 2 complaint<\/a>, citing \u201cconfidential and privileged information,\u201d and did not immediately respond to the second request.<\/p>\n

City staff members say local ethics rules prohibit releasing information about an ethics complaint before the ethics board has had a chance to \u201cscreen\u201d the allegations for validity.<\/p>\n

According to city rules, ethics complaints are not made public before they have been screened by the ethics board for fear an allegation \u201ccould harm the reputation of an innocent person and is contrary to the public interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Herald<\/em> published a story late last month about City Manager Ron LeBlanc\u2019s house being listed for sale with Durango Land and Homes<\/a>, which is co-owned by City Councilor Chris Bettin.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s code of ethics forbids a supervisor from engaging \u201cin a substantial financial transaction for the public official\u2019s private business purposes with a person the city official inspects or supervises in the course of the city official\u2019s official duties.\u201d Bettin is one of LeBlanc\u2019s five direct supervisors.<\/p>\n

The ethics board is scheduled to screen the Aug. 2 complaint Friday. A screening of the most recent complaint has not yet been scheduled, Vicari said. City code requires any ethics complaint be screened within 14 working days.<\/p>\n

The board\u2019s decision to dismiss, mediate or investigate allegations will be made public, said City Attorney Dirk Nelson. The findings and recommendations of the Board of Ethics will also be made public, according to the board\u2019s rules.<\/p>\n

bhauff@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

allegations within the past month are first since 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[4584,1020,1228,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-74064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-city-manager-ron-leblanc","tag-durango-city-council","tag-ethics","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74064"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=74064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}