Ethics Council Declines Action on Anonymous ‘Complaint’ Letter

The Wilton Council on Ethics voted unanimously on Wednesday night, Dec. 6 to take no action regarding an anonymous letter that supposedly alleged complaints about a town official. The council did not say which town official the letter was about.

Council members agreed that the letter writer did not follow the procedures outlined in the council’s code for filing a complaint, which requires providing their name and having the letter notarized.

Because the complaint letter was anonymous, the council could take no further action, such as contacting the sender to advise them on following the proper format if they chose to resubmit the letter.

“I will move that the person submitted it as a complaint, but it did not meet the requirements of the code for us to address it,” Vice Chair Tamara Conway said.

“Because the complaint was anonymous the council agreed it is unable to take further steps,” stated a second motion, which was also approved unanimously.

“We can’t take further steps,” Secretary Rhonda Brown said, noting that the letter “technically” complained about “the actions of someone sitting on a [town] board.”

“If the person’s name was here, we would go back to them,” she said, noting the council had done so in the past when submissions hadn’t followed procedure.

“We wouldn’t consider the opinion, but we’d take another step,” she added.

Before voting, the council spent close to 30 minutes discussing the matter.

Brown and Conway raised the question of how serious would a concern have to be that, if brought to their attention even anonymously, might warrant them taking an action of some kind.

“If it was a serious enough complaint, we’d have to do something,” Conway said.

Chair Thanh Tsoi said that, in such a case, town attorney Ira Bloom could probably be notified.

“We could bring it to Ira to see what he would say,” she said, if an anonymous situation appeared serious enough.

Tsoi said that if a matter was brought to their attention involving overt criminal activity, they would consider going directly to the police.

In other matters, newly appointed council member Warren Serenbetz was officially announced as the new fifth member, although he was not in attendance.

The council has operated with only four members for at least the past year, including Elizabeth Edwards, the outgoing vice chair who will continue to serve.