Assembly should amend the ethics code, end this waste of time

The borough’s ethics board had it right in concluding that the so-called ethics case involving former Assembly Member Savannah Fletcher is a technical and minor matter that deserves no penalty.

It is comparable to the so-called ethics case involving Assembly Member Barbara Haney last year.

The borough ordinance that requires a penalty even when the ethics board says that a penalty is not justified, led to a $1 fine against Haney last year.

The assembly should take the same approach Friday, and end this waste of time and money. The whole thing is trivial. Fletcher made three radio ads with private funds two years ago to promote attendance at borough assembly meetings and did not identify herself on the air.

Until the code is amended to not require a penalty, the token $1 will have to to.

In debating this matter Friday, Haney should not participate, based on what she has said about Fletcher in the recent past. For instance, she called Fletcher a “corrupt tyrant.”

Haney made this remark and others on her personal Twitter/X account, now deleted, in which she did not use her real name, but called herself Steamboat Landing. The assembly doesn’t have to take my word for it that this was her account. The obvious thing is to ask Haney on the record.

Four assembly members said they have a conflict of interest because of their personal or business dealings with Fletcher. A fifth member, Haney, has a bigger conflict than anyone else on the assembly and not just because of her repeated attacks on Fletcher.

Haney is also in court, with a nuisance lawsuit challenging her $1 fine, which she paid. She claims what the assembly did last year to her was illegal.

That leaves four of the nine members able to debate and vote on this. If a fifth member of the assembly has a conflict, then it appears that under Robert’s Rules of Order all the assembly members would decide the matter, according to the borough clerk’s office.

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