The commission has operated with only four members ever since. By law, all four commissioners’ votes are needed to refer a violation to the city council, where seven of nine councilmember votes are required to take any action. In practice, those high hurdles have prevented any ethics complaints from holding city officials to account. “The ethics commission has worsened ethics at the city,” Thacker said. “Before, I could call someone at city staff and I could argue and we could discuss the issues. Now they do it in private in executive session. This has backed things up, not moved things forward.” As Thacker knows from experience, once ethics complaints go to the commis- sion, not much comes out. Born in Louisiana, Thacker came to Phoenix 12 years ago to sell software. Now retired at just 47, he was radicalized for the cause of municipal transparency when an effort to build a frisbee golf course ran into a brick wall of city bureaucracy. Still possessed of Cajun fire, he’s now a main- stay at Ethics Commission meetings. One such meeting was on Jan. 16. Thacker — and his extremely well-behaved dog, an Australian shepherd named after British philosopher Christopher Hitchens that accompanies Thacker everywhere — sat in a small conference room at City Hall. The commission was set to consider a complaint Thacker had brought nearly three years earlier against Charley Jones, a local zoning board member. Five minutes into the meeting, the commission broke into an executive session to discuss the complaint privately. When the executive session ended an hour later, the commission’s four members swiftly voted to dismiss Thacker’s complaint. He received little explanation. For Thacker, the lack of transparency epitomizes a larger problem. Everywhere he looks, average citizens are being boxed out. You need an appointment to do anything at City Hall, he notes, and public comment at city council meetings has been limited to 30 minutes and placed at the end of the agenda. “It’s just the constant disdain that our public servants have for the public,” he said. WHO IS ON THE ETHICS COMMISSION? Who are the commissioners, and what do they consider an ethics violation? We know plenty about the first question and not enough about the second. By law, the five-person commission must be composed of at least two Democrats and two Republicans, a balance that has been thrown off following Lujan’s resignation. Without him, the people tasked with hearing civilian concerns are: • Commission chair Samuel Leyvas III, a Republican and vice president of corporate relations and social responsibility at Valley of the Sun United Way • Cheryl Pietkiewicz, a Republican and communications instructor at Grand Canyon University • Patricia Sallen, a Democrat and legal ethics lawyer and consultant • Peter Schirripa, a politically unaffiliated vice president of sales at ZipRecruiter Collectively they decide what consti- tutes an ethics violation. Phoenix’s city code is vague on the subject, requiring only that “all City elected officials, employees, board members, and volunteers must maintain the utmost standards of personal integrity, truthfulness, honesty and fair- ness in carrying out their public duties, avoid any improprieties in their roles as public servants, comply with all applicable laws, and never use their City position or power for improper personal gain.” So far the commission hasn’t met a complaint it feels violates that standard. Phoenix spokesperson Ashley Patton said eight complaints awaited the ethics commission when it began operating and that no new complaints have been filed. Since March, the commission has shot down complaints against former council- member Sal DiCiccio for allegedly spreading disinformation on social media; a complaint former councilmember Carlos Garcia for a questionable interaction with a police officer after being pulled over; and Ramos’ complaint against Pastor. Ramos thought Pastor’s conduct violated Chapter III, Section 4 of the City Charter, which stipulates that “neither the Council nor any Member thereof shall give orders to any subordinates of the City Manager, either publicly or privately.” The charter’s prescribed punishment is removal from office. “That’s exactly the kind of thing that shouldn’t be going on with city council — people getting into stuff down at the worker level,” said Painter, the ethics lawyer. “Because obviously there’s all sorts of favoritism, cronyism, you name it.” Ramos explored his options vigorously. He said he went to city auditors, human resources and the city attorney, all of whom said they don’t investigate council- members. Records show City Attorney Julie Kreigh told him the city attorney “does not have this authority.” In the mean- time Ramos was demoted, though records show the city offered to remove the disci- pline notice related to his demotion from his department’s files if he’d drop his complaint. “I told them to shove it,” Ramos said. The city’s human resources department did investigate Pimentel. A draft of a report obtained by New Times did not substan- tiate the allegation that Pimentel was creating falsified work orders but did find that Pimentel and another man were submitting false claims to the city’s integ- rity line to try to get people fired. The report said Pimentel “misused his relationship to city officials, as well as his perceived position of importance, in a way that has caused negative impacts to Streets personnel morale and wellbeing.” Phoenix spokesperson Dan Wilson said the HR probe into Pimentel was finalized by a different investigator after the first one resigned midway through. New Times has requested the finalized version but has not received it. Pimentel retired in March 2024, about eight months before he was eligible to receive a pension. (In his resignation letter, Pimentel complained that he had “been subjected to retaliation and harassment in the workplace, which has been both targeted and severe.”) But Ramos still wanted an investigation of Pastor, eventu- ally filing a complaint with the Ethics Commission about a month before the commission was impaneled. He went to the meeting in which his complaint was scheduled to be discussed, but the commission canceled it. (It has canceled four meetings, in July, August, October and November). Ramos was unable to make the next meeting. When the commission released its boilerplate dismissal, no one from the commission or the city informed him, Ramos said. “I had to look it up myself.” EXECUTIVE SESSION ISSUES Thacker has been to several Ethics Commission meetings, though he spends much of them excluded from the proceedings while the commission goes into executive session. On Jan. 24, Thacker filed a complaint with the office of Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes alleging the Ethics Commission violated open meetings law during its two most recent meetings. Richie Taylor, a spokesperson for Mayes, declined to comment on Thacker’s complaint. Thacker also told the commis- sioners in a Feb. 6 virtual meeting See No Evil from p 11 The members of the Phoenix Ethics Commission. From left to right, Cheryl Pietkiewicz, Patricia Sallen, commission chair Samuel Leyvas III and Peter Schirripa. (Photo by TJ L’Heureux) >> p 15
