No disciplinary action will be taken over an ethics violation by the West Tisbury financial management team.
This issue was brought up during a previous West Tisbury select board meeting last month, but since it was not a listed agenda item at the time, it was tabled until the meeting on Wednesday, March 29.
Board member Skipper Manter brought up the point that there could be a financial conflict of interest because some members of the financial team are town employees, and some of the budget discussions included town staff wages.
Members who were town employees included West Tisbury town administrator Jennifer Rand, town treasurer Katherine Logue, and town accountant Bruce Stone.
“They decided they would vote first and call the ethics commission to see if what they did was OK or not,” Manter said. “I didn’t say any more, but I was extremely uncomfortable with that.”
Manter said he was told the ethics commission did find this a violation, and financial disclosure forms were filed after the fact. Manter said while he understands that town staff have a lot of work to do on behalf of West Tisbury, he underscored that ethics violations are serious matters. “I think, on our behalf and on behalf of the town, we should take some sort of minor action just to show the town and our other employees … that ethics violations are very serious, and we expect that people of our town — employees and elected officials — to follow ethics guidelines,” he said.
Logue pointed out that they were on a deadline and needed to bring recommendations to the board. “There was no time to go to the ethics [commission] and then come back and still meet the deadline,” she said, adding that a separate vote was taken to rescind the recommendation if the ethics commission found issues with the decision.
Additionally, Logue said discussions about topics like cost-of-living allowances, salaries, and overrides took place to make recommendations to the board for nearly two decades. She added that Rand talked with the ethics commission after the meeting took place.
Rand also pointed out the time constraint. “This was not a willful violation, and this was not a situation — having taken the ethics test — the answer was clear to me because we are advisory to the select board, and not actually decisionmakers,” she said.
The employees have taken or are scheduled to take the ethics test. Considering the disclosures were filed and the work the team is tasked with doing, the board decided to drop the matter after further discussion.