With only about forty days before he leaves office after eight years of service, Rye Mayor Josh Cohn is still looking for vindication on the 2023 ethics debacle surrounding the city’s tree ordinance. In the winter of 2023, the City’s Board of Ethics found a ethics violation by the Mayor and his allies – Cohn plus current councilmember Julie Souza and former council members Carolina Johnson and Ben Stacks.
At Wednesday night’s Council meeting, the Mayor revisited the ethics issue again, this time revealing he had hired an outside attorney on his own dime to review the matter. He has previously advocated the City hire the same attorney to examine the 2023 imbroglio and the legal boundaries of our ethics board. His drumbeat on being “wronged” has been constant (and as recent as an October piece by the Mayor printed on MyRye.com (see Guest Opinion: Rye’s REAL Ethics Violation: Tarring Innocent Volunteers Carolina Johnson, Julie Souza and Ben Stacks)). Cohn read from the letter and pushed (again) for the City to hire the attorney for a review and invite him in for a formal meeting. With the exception of his remaining ally Julie Souza, the rest of the seven member council was (once again) not taking Cohn’s bait.
“I asked Levinthal [the lawyer] to examine just a few of the many questions raised by the 2023 decision, his analysis was devastating,” said Mayor Cohn, reading many excerpts from Levinthal’s letter. “This vindicates Carolina Johnson, Julie Souza, Ben Stacks and me. We were abused, we were right to object but we knew that.”
Like the many prior attempts to relitigate the issue, councilmembers were not biting.
“This whole process is irresponsible,” said Councilmember Bill Henderson, who has had a prickly relationship with the Mayor. “The fact that the council hasn’t worked together for the last year is the mayor’s fault because he couldn’t rise above this whole thing and lead like a leader. Instead, he’s been fuming for two years over the fact that that he couldn’t bully the board of ethics and do what he wanted. It’s absolutely outrageous.”
We have witnessed two and a half years of bullying, double downing and deceit, and that is what really has disgusted this public, not the original dispute over the appearance of impropriety. It was your conduct in bullying the board of ethics, suing the board of ethics, suing the city, asking people to pay for your legal fees, then withdrawing your lawsuit, waiving around a phony NYCOM opinion and saying it was real when it wasn’t real, then apologizing for your misinformation, and then continuing on with NYCOM ’til you got the decision that said what you would like to think it should say, but has nothing to do with the facts of this case,” continued Henderson.
Mayor elect and Councilmember Josh Nathan, who like Henderson has also gone toe-to-toe with Cohn on the ethics issue, adopted a firm but more conciliatory tone, offering to read and consider the new letter. The council voted 5 – 2 to delay further discussion until its December 3rd meeting, it second to last meeting for the year (and second to last for the Mayor and his ally Souza before they are out of office). No doubt the council will try to continue to blunt the Mayor’s concerns for his remaining days without getting hit by political shrapnel.
Video of the Council discussion:
Are You Still Here? Its over. Go home.
Ferris Bueller