Wednesday evening saw 2023’s first meeting of the Ithaca Common Council. First Ward Councilperson Cynthia Brock read a statement regarding the Remaining Public Safety Investigation report, recently released by the city of Ithaca.
Brock initiated a county Ethics Advisory Board probe into the Reimagining Public Safety process in May of 2022. The city of Ithaca arranged for its own investigation in August of 2022. The Tompkins County Ethics Advisory Board is yet to conclude its investigation. Brock’s comments were in regard to the city report.
The text of Brock’s statement is available below.
Last month, the city released the Reimagining Public Safety Investigation Report by Kristen Smith, attorney for Bond, Schoeneck & King. Authorized by unanimous vote of council, Ms. Smith was tasked to investigate, “ethical concerns regarding potential outside financial influence on the Reimagining Public Safety process,” with “focused concern on apparent outside payments to non staff, volunteer or consultant participants in the process.”
The role of the outside influence on Ithaca city governance is a trend that has been expanding over the years and difficult to identify as advocacy organizations have effectively used the hiring of local lobbyists, the gifting of services, and willing government officials to achieve their goals.
The Smith Report documented the depth and breadth of access and influence over city processes granted by former Mayor Myrick to outside lobbying groups for the purposes of achieving his personal political aspirations.
Whether we are enacting policies to address those living with addiction or mental health challenges, enacting departmental changes to identify and reduce over policing of minoritized communities or enacting programs to address climate change, Ithaca has always been a city whose constituencies and elected officials are committed to implementing solutions based on the needs and circumstances of our local community.
Known as the Berkeley of the East, Ithaca is famous for our progressive approaches to societal and environmental challenges. Independent of the reality that surrounds our ten square miles, we are active leaders of social change, outside lobbying of council members to achieve state focused legislative goals, distracts and undermines the work of council in implementing meaningful change needed for our local community.
The Smith Report recognized and documented the actions of our former mayor and select staff who, because he held our City’s highest office, was able to violate city policies and protocols to avoid transparency and accountability, to fund outside lobbyists, and to bypass Common Council, in exercising its duty and responsibility to make informed decisions in the funding, design and delivery of city services and government.
The avoidance of public process and the city and county investigations undertaken to reveal it has contributed to undermining the trust, faith and good work of our staff and community members and distract the efforts of every one of us who seeks to deliver the best services and support for our vulnerable and to remedy generations of racial bias and oppression in policing.
Public confidence in our institution and our City government is the lowest it’s been in recent memory, and it will take the commitment of council and our new mayor to turn the tide and rebuild our institution as we head into a city manager form of government.
So what now? It is incumbent on Common Council to focus our work in 2023 to undertake the essential, painstaking and difficult work of strengthening and updating our policies, to reinforce our system of legislative checks and balances, and to uphold the highest standards of professionalism and accountability. Council needs to do the job it was elected to do.
The actions of the mayor and soon to be City Manager are subject to the oversight, review and approval of Common Council. The purposeful or inadvertent circumvention of Common Council has to stop.
-Cynthia Brock, 1/4/23
