The ethics committee for the city of Hampton ruled during a Feb. 26 public hearing that an ethics violation alleged by one city council member against another was not a violation.

The complaint was filed by Elton Brown against Stephanie Bodie, charging that she made a statement via email regarding a former city employee for the intended purpose of making it a public record, based on an article in a Henry County newspaper last year written after an open records request.

The vote was 5-0 in favor of Bodie, who did not mention the employee by name when commenting after the hearing and stressed that she was acting in her role as a public servant to make a genuine request for information.

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Mathew Palmer, a former Delta Air Lines employee, at his home in Atlanta on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025.  Palmer was fired less than two weeks after writing a post on social media about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. (Natrice Miller/AJC)