#Middlebury #EthicsCommission #EthicsComplaint
By MARJORIE NEEDHAM
As reported in the April 2025 issue, two Middlebury women – Jennifer Mahr and Peggy Gibbons – had ethics complaints lodged against them. While the complaint against Mahr filed by Board of Finance Chairman Vincent Cipriano on January 28, 2025, remains active, it appears the February 13, 2025, complaint vy Fran Barton Jr. against Conservation Commission member Peggy Gibbons has been dropped. However, Gibbons said she understood a vote on the matter won’t be taken until the Commission next meets on Wednesday, July 9, at 6 p.m. in the Town Hall Conference Room.
Gibbons said of the complaint, “It should never have been filed in the first place. It should have been dismissed.”
Apparently the complaint against Gibbons was discussed in the Ethics Commission’s executive session on April 9, 2025, despite the fact that the letter from Gibbons’s attorney clearly stated, “Gibbons waives her right to confidentiality as to this proceeding and welcomes public scrutiny of these baseless allegations.”
That attorney, William M. Bloss, in a strongly worded five-page March 4, 2025, letter to the Commission stated in no uncertain terms that the complaint needed to be dismissed. It also pointed out the following:
- The Ethics Commission itself is violating the town charter since it failed to adopt any regulations governing hearings and appeals including a complete lack of standards, thus violating the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.
- Commission members who serve on another town board or commission must recuse themselves from the proceeding because an Ethics Commission member may not serve on any other board.
Ethics Commission members are Paul Bialobrzeski, Sharon S. Bosco, Michael von Kannewurff, John J. Holmes and Vincent Graziano. Bialobrzeski is a member of the Land and Open Space Acquisition Commission and Bosco is chair of the Greenway Committee.
Bloss’s letter said the Commission was violating Gibbons’ First Amendment rights by entertaining “baseless ethics complaints against public officials’ support of political positions with which the administration disagrees.” It said she has a constitutional right to support whatever causes she wishes and to advocate for whatever positions she wishes to advocate, and she didn’t forfeit those rights when she joined the Conservation Commission.
It said the proceeding, if it went any further, violated her First Amendment rights “as it is clearly designed to chill her protected speech.”
The letter also outlined pertinent legal principles. It said state law is very clear that towns may define a conflict of interest only if the public official “will derive a direct monetary gain or suffer a direct monetary loss, as the case may be, by reason of the official’s official activity.” It then said there is neither credible evidence or even an allegation Gibbons’s vote would result in “direct monetary gain,” and the complaint should be dismissed on that basis alone.
The letter said Gibbons had an unconditional right to advocate against the facility (Southford Park), including helping with a fundraiser and voting for or against related issues that came before the Conservation Commission. It then listed multiple court cases to support the statement and discussed retaliatory conduct intended to punish a person for exercising their free speech rights.
It said, “As a town official Gibbons has the highest level of First Amendment protection to express her views, which the threat of sanction by the Ethics Commission in this circumstance cannot limit without violating federal constitutional law.”
The letter from Bloss ended with this, “The Middlebury administration needs to accept that dissent from its profoundly unpopular position on the Timex property is not an inconvenience but is core speech protected by the United States and Connecticut Constitutions.”
