Fayetteville’s Ethics Commission under scrutiny  

A pattern of complaint dismissals, an opaque consideration process, and a member who herself has violated the commission’s bylaws are among factors that have raised questions about the nature — and credibility — of the city of Fayetteville’s ethics authority. 

The city’s Ethics Commission is a volunteer advisory committee assigned to “investigate complaints, render advisory opinions, hear complaints, and publish findings and recommendations regarding alleged violations of the city’s ethics policy by city employees, board and commission members, and City Council members.” 

The commission’s five members are appointed by the Fayetteville City Council. Three are chosen by the council from the general public. The other two positions are, by design, filled by an attorney and a certified public accountant. Those seats are also appointed by the council, though they used to be appointed by external entities. According to an amendment passed in 2023, the change came because the board that had previously appointed a member was no longer active, and removing external entities “streamlined” the appointing process.

Meanwhile, public records obtained by CityView show each of the seven complaints brought to the city’s Ethics Commission over the past five years have been dismissed. The pattern of dismissals comes as recent complaint filers have expressed dissatisfaction with the commission’s rulings. CityView’s research shows an air of secrecy around the commission’s deliberations, which it shields under public records laws.   

Discontent and questions about the commission’s effectiveness from complainants have also resurfaced concerns about malfeasance on the city council, which has seen two members resign since 2018. Former City Council Member Shakeyla Ingram made an ethics complaint to the commission against the other nine council members in 2020 — which was dismissed — and, in 2021, Ingram described the council as the “most corrupt” board she’s worked on. (Ingram did not respond to recent requests for comment from CityView about her 2020 complaint.)

Former City Council Member Tyrone Williams resigned from the board in 2018 after a secret recording was made public of him asking a developer for money in exchange for making a lien on a property disappear. The former council member resigned before the Ethics Commission could make a ruling on his behavior. 

Some complainants believe not much has changed since those resignations. Fayetteville resident Leonard Williams, whose recent complaint was dismissed by the ethics commission, believes there’s a distance between the city’s decision-makers and those they represent. 

“They don’t understand, you’re sitting up there, you’re playing with people,” he told CityView, referring to the Ethics Commission. “You might drive somebody over the edge, just doing things to them and disrespecting them like they’re not worth anything. They play dangerous games with these people, man.” 

Mayor Mitch Colvin — named in two complaints in the past five years — rejected the idea that there were flaws in the Ethics Commission process. 

“I think because the outcome for whoever is complaining about the process doesn’t turn out favorably doesn’t mean the system is broken,” Colvin told CityView. “People are able to make any kind of accusation they want, and the purpose of the Ethics Commission is to vet it and to verify it.”

Recent complaint 

The Ethics Commission was called upon this spring to assess a complaint against the council’s longest-serving member, D.J. Haire. Leonard Williams alleged Haire used his position of power in an attempt to stop the demolition of a house Leonard Williams had bought from Alvin McNeil. Leonard Williams claims McNeil said he was a family member of Haire’s. He alleged that Haire knowingly worked with others to sell him a home on the city’s demolition list, while making unmet assurances about how he could control the demolition status of the house, in order for McNeil to get the sale money from Leonard Williams. 

Leonard Williams acknowledged he was aware the home was on the city’s demolition list when he bought it, and said he had initially been reluctant to go through with the purchase after making that discovery. That is, until he says McNeil assured him that Haire could stop the demolition, or at least delay it until they had time to bring it up to code. 

“When D.J. Haire came out, that’s when I gave his cousin the money, he [Haire] confirmed that everything will be good,” Leonard Williams told CityView. 

CityView’s investigations found Haire tried to stop the demolition on multiple occasions, while also attempting to distance himself from the situation by communicating with Leonard Williams through a third party. For instance, comments made by Development Services Director Gerald Newton during a Fayetteville City Council meeting in November 2023 reference an unsuccessful attempt in August 2023 to stay the demolition on the house. This aligns with Leonard Williams’ claims about when Haire had visited the property and tried to stop the demolition.

Publicly, Haire made special requests to prevent the demolition during council meetings, and privately in emails with colleagues, at one point telling other council members he needed “help immediately” to halt the demolition. Meanwhile, Leonard Williams says Haire largely ignored his calls and texts, and only responded to his emails after Haire had made official attempts to stop the demolition order. 

Haire, Leonard Williams said, instead preferred to communicate through a Fayetteville contractor, Sean Lennon. When asked by CityView, Haire denied knowing Lennon. But an email Leonard Williams obtained from a city records request and shared with CityView demonstrates that Haire was at one point engaging in email correspondence with Lennon — Haire, for example, forwarded Lennon an email chain between council members in regards to his request to stop the demolition, writing, “for your information only.”

Haire further denied any allegations of wrongdoing and was dismissive of the investigation, telling CityView in June he didn’t think the complaint was “going anywhere,” and questioned why he was being asked about it. He proceeded to suggest that Leonard Williams was involved in criminal activity.

“The house was on the demo list, and the people sold it,” Haire told CityView. “So that’s some kind of illegal thing that was going on. I don’t know anything about that part. And the house never should have been sold, never should have been sold to anyone.”

The city’s Ethics Commission dismissed Leonard Williams’ complaint on June 18 after two closed-door meetings — and without initiating a hearing. 

Public records adherence 

The city did not release a recording of those closed-session discussions in response to CityView’s public records requests, nor did it release the official explanation that Leonard Williams heard about its dismissal during the second and final meeting about his complaint. In a recording taken by Leonard Williams and shared with CityView, Bob Cogswell, the Ethics Commission’s lawyer and former city attorney, said the complaint failed to “fall within the purview of the commission because [Leonard Williams’] allegations are groundless as they relate to any violation of the code of ethics.”

Cogswell said the closed-session discussions couldn’t be released under North Carolina general statute, which involves public records law for trial preparations methods. Hearings held by the Ethics Commission are considered quasi-judicial, court-like proceedings by non-judicial bodies which can interpret law.

“If it turns out that the documents involved in the case could become pleadings in some courtroom, depending on the nature of that document, it can’t be released,” Cogswell told CityView. 

Media law attorneys with the North Carolina Press Association expressed skepticism over this explanation. Mike Tadych, of Stevens Martin Vaughn & Tadych, PLLC, said that, since the records CityView asked for were requested after the complaint was dismissed, they should have been released. 

“If the matter is over, the records should be released per subsection (e) as it sounds like ‘legal proceeding’ (as defined by that statute) has concluded,” Tadych said in an email to CityView. 

Pattern of dismissals

The Ethics Commission has dismissed each of the complaints lodged against it in the past five years — including four lodged against various council members, and three filed against former Police Chief Gina Hawkins. Hawkins, who faced criticism throughout her tenure, left the role in January 2023. In August, she threatened to sue the city if it failed to settle over an alleged hostile and discriminatory work environment (the city ultimately agreed to a $200,000 settlement).

CityView spoke with three complainants, each of whom expressed dissatisfaction with the outcomes of their cases. Former City Council Member Tisha Waddell filed ethics complaints against Mayor Mitch Colvin and Mayor Pro Tem Kathy Jensen in 2020 for allegedly conducting business without the rest of the council during attempts to sell PWC to a private equity firm — a deal that ultimately fell through because the PWC felt the company had not “established the transparency and trust necessary” for the utility to move forward with negotiations. 

“Business seemed to be moving forward in those meetings without the consensus of the council, which violated the organizational structure that the council was governed by,” Waddell told CityView. 

The Ethics Commission dismissed Waddell’s complaint. Waddell claims the dismissal was ill-judged — a result of a miscommunication between her and City Attorney Karen McDonald, that was taken out of context by the Ethics Commission to dismiss the validity of Waddell’s concerns. 

The alleged secretive dealings she described prompted Waddell to resign from the council in 2021. In her resignation letter, she called for an independent investigation of the city council, but the council declined to do so. Waddell believes her situation underscores other flaws with the Ethics Commission’s process. 

“I think that there are a lot of holes where the ethics committee are concerned,” Waddell told CityView. “And not necessarily that they don’t know what they’re doing, but the way that it’s all set up doesn’t really lead to real transparency and real fact finding, because they have to base what they’re dealing with off of what’s presented to them.” 

Cogswell believes the Ethics Commission has sufficiently complied with the ordinance that guides it while making decisions on complaints it handles.

“We followed the process,” Cogswell said.

Speaking to CityView, Colvin reiterated previous statements that Waddell’s claims were “baseless.”

CityView’s investigations at the time found no evidence of corruption in Waddell’s allegations about the private equity firm that sought to buy PWC, but did find evidence that Colvin and others had worked behind the scenes in an attempt to close the PWC deal and that the evidence indicates officials had purposely tried to keep the public in the dark.

In 2021, Raleigh attorney Mikael Gross made a complaint with the Ethics Commission on behalf of two Fayetteville police officers he was representing at the time, he told CityView. The complaint alleged misuse of city resources for personal gain, interference in investigations, and questionable hiring and training practices. Notably, three of the allegations were about the police department’s K-9 units, which have recently been under scrutiny after an officer was filmed punching his K-9 in June. 

In February 2022, the commission dismissed the complaint without explanation; Gross appealed the decision to the Cumberland County Superior Court. That fall, the court ruled that the commission must release findings of fact and a legal basis for its decision. Despite two attempts by the commission to dismiss the appeal in 2022 and 2023, the court upheld Gross’s position.

Speaking with CityView, Gross criticized the commission’s lack of transparency and the ambiguity of the ethics complaint process, which he said amounted to a “misinterpretation of the law.” Gross also recalled difficulty accessing documents that the court ultimately later ruled he should be granted access to, despite the Ethics Commission’s initial refusal to provide them. 

“Transparency is something that the Ethics Commission apparently is not concerned about,” Gross told CityView. 

Too close for comfort 

An investigation by CityView found one member of the Ethics Commission has violated its bylaws by making a campaign contribution while serving on the board, codified in Sec 2-95. of the municipal code. According to public campaign finance records, Dymond Spain donated $100 to Mayor Mitch Colvin’s mayoral campaign on Aug. 3, 2021. Spain was appointed to the commission on April 1, 2021, four months earlier. She is still a member, serving in the attorney role on the commission. 

Spain’s actions violate a subsection in the ordinance that prohibits Ethics Commission members from “engaging in any city election political activities and from making campaign contributions to candidates in city elections during their terms as commission members.” According to the ordinance, “violations of this subsection shall result in removal from board membership.”

Spain did not respond to repeated requests for comment from CityView. Cogswell declined to comment on Spain’s violation. Colvin said he was unaware of the contribution, which is one of almost 100 in that specific receipt filing period for his 2022 mayoral race. He emphasized that his campaign throws fundraisers often and suggested it may have been a “slip” on Spain’s part. 

“So she was a new board member and may not have understood the rules, but I can’t speak to that,” Colvin said. “But certainly, I wasn’t aware of it specifically because we have a lot of donors that support, have supported my campaign over the last eight years.”

Of the city’s boards and commissions, only the Ethics Commission is barred from contributing to city council candidate campaigns. 

A lack of trust

Intentional or not, Spain’s breach of the rules speaks to larger questions about the city government’s adherence to protocols and legal standards. Waddell believes many violations on the Fayetteville City Council’s part, for instance, have been unintentional because of what she sees as a historical precedent for being lax toward protocol. 

“If you don’t know the rules, you don’t know when this council is violating the rules,” Waddell said.

The concerns about Fayetteville’s Ethics Commission have also been mirrored on the state level with the North Carolina Ethics Commission and the North Carolina Supreme Court facing backlash for dismissing complaints about public servants while having conflicts of interest or being appointed by the body that is being investigated, especially in the case of judges. 

Gross said he believes the Ethics Commission needs some reform to clarify its role and responsibilities, something which Cogswell said the city council has the power to do.

“I think the process is discombobulated,” Gross told CityView. “I think it could do with some rulemaking on behalf of city council to say, ‘Hey, this is what we expect. These are the rules. Here’s how you have to do it. This is or is not included.’ But right now, it just seems to be a very, very vague set of rules.”

Leonard Williams still can’t figure out who authorized his house to be demolished; the city has not provided clear answers to CityView when asked. Now, he is looking for a lawyer to try to get the thousands of dollars he said he lost when the house he bought was demolished. 

After his experience, Leonard Williams expressed concern over future complainants who bring cases to the Fayetteville Ethics Commission. He said trust has been broken between him and the high-level city staff, elected officials, and appointed members of the Ethics Commission that he interacted with. 

“It’s weird, you know, you’re coming together and sticking together against the public, and you’re a public servant,” Leonard Williams said. 

Contact Evey Weisblat at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608. This story was made possible by donations from readers like you to CityView News Fund, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization committed to an informed democracy in Fayetteville and Cumberland County.