While the city's ethics board gropes for a set of rules under which to operate, Dunwoody's City Council said it may not be able to help.
Nor is the council ready to hire a hearing officer or appoint two alternate ethics board members as requested, council members said at a meeting Monday.
The ethics board is considering two controversial complaints involving all City Council members, the mayor and the city manager. At the center of the complaints are actions surrounding a land deal discussed at a closed City Council meeting in February.
But before ethics board members can proceed with their first official action since being seated four years ago, members say they need a set of bylaws.
"We asked at the time for some bylaws and procedures [and] never got them," ethics board Chairman Steve Blaske said.
The current bylaws are little more than a template from Sandy Springs and require revisions specific to Dunwoody, Blaske said. There had been no need for bylaws until a few months ago, when the ethics board was asked to rule on allegations relating to the closed meeting.
Mayor Mike Davis and five council members filed ethics charges against Councilwoman Adrian Bonser for allegedly leaking information discussed at the session. Bonser responded by filing charges against the mayor, the City Council and the city manager for allegedly holding a meeting and taking a vote in violation of the state Open Meetings Act.
Last month, the City Council approved the ethics board's request for an independent attorney.
But council members said Monday they were uncomfortable delving further into the panel's inner workings. Councilman Terry Nall said he was not clear why the board needed a hearing officer when it had an attorney to advise it on procedure.
So far, the investigation into the leak and the subsequent ethics probe have rung up more than $80,000 in expenses.
The time, money and attention spent on the investigation stirred resident Cheryl Summers to scold the council Monday.
"I wish you would stop wasting time with this silly ethics complaint," she said.
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