The Riverdale City Council passed a new ordinance on Monday, replacing one which was confusing and did not work well. City Attorney L’Erin Barnes revised the city’s ordinance regarding the way ethics complaints can be filed, after the city tried to address the 22 ethics complaints that one council member filed against Mayor Evelyn Wynn-Dixon and two other council members in May. The old ordinance specified the council must vote to accept each of the investigator’s findings. The council struggled to investigate and hear the complaints, and many were more than a year old, past the designated deadline to investigate the complaint. Other complaints were unclear with missing information, such as dates on which the violations occurred.
The new ordinance states that any allegations of ethics violations that occurred 12 months prior to the complaint filing won’t be investigated, and the council cannot vote to consider it for investigation. Any complaint filed without a date would not be addressed. The new ordinance also states that the accused could not vote on the findings, but the complainant could. A council member who has filed a complaint also cannot have a vote in the hearing process under the new ordinance. The new ordinance also specifies that anybody who submits a complaint must do so under oath and must make sure the complaints are legible.
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