The woman who has filed an ethics complaint against Las Cruces City Councilor Jose Frietze says she does not believe she had to keep it confidential, despite Frietze’s claim to the contrary, and said he’s trying to deflect attention from his own actions by accusing her of having political motives.
Jackye Meinecke said she hesitates to “add to the fire” by saying much more because Frietze has “increased the decibel level of this complaint” with talk of a deposition and his own accusations.
Meinecke filed the complaint on Oct. 17 alleging that Frietze violated the city ethics code by failing to disclose land transactions between his non-profit and
On Friday, Frietze’s attorney filed a motion seeking the immediate dismissal of the complaint or, in the alternative, that the city require an immediate deposition, under oath, for Meinecke, and order that she preserve all documents, phone records and electronic communications related to the complaint. Frietze said that would prove the political motives behind the complaint.
Frietze’s attorney contends that the complaint “raises unfounded, unsubstantiated and frivolous charges” that amount to “willful misuse of the entire process for publicity and political gain.” He claims in the motion that Meinecke was required to keep the complaint confidential.
That’s not true, Meinecke said.
“(Frietze) is trying to move the discussion from his failure to reveal his Philippou connections to character assassination of the messenger,” Meinecke said. “As the citizen here, I am not required to explain my personal life, associations or motives.”
The confidentiality discussion
In addition, Meinecke said, while the city clerk is required to keep such complaints confidential through the early stages of the investigation, she sought legal advice and asked the clerk “about the confidentiality of the filing. According to both sources, I could do with the complaint as I saw fit.” Though she says she didn’t release the complaint to the Las Cruces Sun-News and other media, as Frietze’s attorney alleges, Meinecke said she did discuss it with another citizen – a retired journalist – and said the complaint was released to the media by that person or at that person’s request.
The code of ethics requires that a complaint, once filed, be considered by an independent attorney. If that attorney finds grounds to proceed, a board will be formed to consider the complaint. Only if that board finds a violation and asks the city council to consider it does the code state that the city will make the complaint public.
The code is silent on whether citizens who file complaints have to keep them secret, and it’s not clear whether the city would have authority to require that even if the code attempted to assert it.
The city isn’t commenting on this point, but it’s likely that the complaint is in the hands of an independent attorney who is investigating.
The timing of the complaint
The complaint comes as the Nov. 6 election approaches, and Frietze is facing three challengers. Philippou is a controversial topic in the election because the council approved in May a 6,000-acre Philippou development that could add 30,000 homes to
Meinecke told me when the complaint was filed that she does believe the city’s growth is out of control, but said her motive isn’t political. She said she filed the complaint as soon as she learned that Frietze had failed to disclose several land transactions between his non-profit and Philippou that have occurred since 2005, a time in which the council voted on several Philippou developments.
At issue are two provisions in the city’s ethics code. The first states that a conflict of interest exists when an official’s personal interests conflict with public duties or “when, to a reasonable person, it would appear that the actions of a public official are partial, biased or otherwise compromised due to the public official’s private interests or personal gain being in conflict with the public interest.”
The second provision states that an official should disclose any situation that could be a conflict of interest, “be it real, potential, perceived or alleged,” during a pubic meeting of the city council. It’s then up to the council to decide whether the official can participate in discussion or a vote on the agenda item in question.
Meinecke reiterated what she has said previously – that she would have filed the complaint earlier, putting more distance between it and the Nov. 6 election, if she had obtained the information earlier. She filed the complaint the same week the information was revealed publicly, for the first time, in the Albuquerque Journal.
Frietze has not returned a call seeking comment.