The Brookfield Board of Ethics is getting to spend a lot of time together these days.
For the second time in two weeks, the three-person board will again meet in Town Hall at noon to discuss four now-confidential ethics complaints. The charter allows for the ethics board to consider complaints against town employees and elected officials.
Since November, the board has been asked to consider 12 different complaints, only one of which was deemed to have enough probable cause to go forward to a hearing. That was for town dispatcher and former Board of Education member Greg Beck. The hearing, though, was cancelled because prior to the hearing Beck resigned his seat, which was the requested action of two mothers who filed official complaints related to an inappropriate Facebook post he made related to anniversary events for the Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Talk around town suggests that these complaints are politically motivated, and stem from concerns local residents have related to town and school financial management issues. Board members, however, are bound by state law and the town charter to keep the complaints confidential until a determination is made related to probable cause. If no probable cause is found, the complaints remain confidential unless the person who the complaint was filed against opts to make that public.