Ethics complaints against 3 City Council members warrant investigation, attorney says
An ethics complaint filed against a Republican City Council member will trigger “further review” by an outside investigator, city attorney Patrick Baker told elected officials in an email Monday.
A total of three outside investigations are now needed into Charlotte City Council members — though the tally could climb if more citizens continue voicing ethics concerns about their elected representatives.
Based on the city’s ethics policy, other recent complaints involving council member Tariq Bokhari require more information before Baker can start an internal investigation or solicit outside reviews, the city attorney said Sunday.
“As directed by the policy, I will be contacting those complainants to provide them with an opportunity to provide more specific facts to support the basis of their allegations,” Baker said in his Sunday email to City Council and the city clerk. That includes a 15-page complaint from Charlotte attorney Michael Roessler — who alleges corruption by Bokhari as he merged “his private-sector work with public duties ” — as well as a complaint from Charlotte NACCP President Corine Mack about Bokhari.
The council member is executive director of the Carolina Fintech Hub, a nonprofit designed to turn the Charlotte region into a hub for financial technology.
Baker initially told council members this weekend that ethics complaints against council members Dimple Ajmera and James Mitchell warrant further investigation, weeks after the two Democrats questioned Bokhari on a possible conflict of interest involving the hub.
The North Carolina Republican Party filed ethics complaints with the city clerk this month, after Ajmera and Mitchell raised concerns about Bokhari. The N.C. GOP complaints accuse Ajmera and Mitchell of using their positions as council members for personal gain.
“It really feels like vindication after a long couple months of brutal attacks,” Bokhari said Sunday.
But later Sunday, Baker sent another email to council members. Two more people have filed complaints against Bokhari, including Mack.
Later Sunday, Bokhari told the Observer he hadn’t seen the email or the additional complaints against him but is “assuming they are as baseless as the other attacks I’ve been subjected to for the last two months on a daily basis. It’s a dangerous time to defend the police.”
City policy directs the city attorney to hire an independent investigator when necessary, but do not specify how to hire or fund the investigator, Baker said in his Sunday night email to council members.
“There is a good bit of work to do on that front, therefore, you should not assume that the start of an investigation is imminent,” Baker said.
Baker said he expects to have completed additional reviews of the earlier complaints against Bokhari, as well as reviews of the new complaints, before hiring an outside investigator.
In the memo to council members, Baker said his review of the ethics complaints does not assess the accuracy of each one — just whether they meet the criteria laid out in the city’s ethics policy to require further investigation. Baker will begin searching for an independent investigator to review the complaints and update the city council by Friday, he said. The memo was first reported by The Charlotte Ledger.
In his Sunday night email, Baker also critiqued the city’s ethics policy, saying at least one “glaring problem” with the policy is that it provides “no opportunity for a thorough substantive review of an allegation” before requiring the city attorney to start an independent investigation “without any consideration by the city council.”
The complaints
Mitchell and Ajmera raised concerns toward Bokhari last month, after Bokhari agreed to help city administrators decide how federal coronavirus relief money should be used.
Ajmera and Mitchell criticized Bokhari and city staff after administrators proposed sending $1.5 million to participants in an advanced technology jobs program at the Carolina Fintech Hub, a nonprofit led by Bokhari. Council members then barred the Carolina Fintech Hub from participating in the program.
Some of the original complaints against Bokhari do not currently warrant further investigation by an independent party, in part because the complaints lacked specificity, Baker said in his Saturday memo, and due to the “practical impact” of the decision not to move forward with the proposal using Bokhari’s firm.
Mack claims the city’s arrangement with Bokhari had created distrust between Council members and Charlotte residents — particularly in Black and brown communities.
“The opportunity for this funding should have been open to the public, specifically Black lead organizations as we are addressing Black inequities and discrimination,” Mack wrote in an Aug. 6 complaint shared with the Observer.
Less than two weeks after the city council highlighted concerns about Bokhari, the N.C. GOP filed the complaints against Ajmera and Mitchell, criticizing “personal attacks of ethics violations on Republican City Councilman Tariq Bokhari, who has been a lone outspoken voice defending the police and fighting to keep the RNC’s economic impact for Charlotte’s small businesses and hospitality workers.”
The complaints accuse Mitchel of using a taxpayer-funded trip to Detroit sports facilities for personal gain. WBTV reported on questions about Mitchell’s trip last November.
Earlier this month, Mitchell called the trip a “fact-finding mission for me,” ahead of potential changes to the Carolina Panthers’ Bank of America Stadium.
The complaints accuse Ajmera of using a series of rezoning cases to solicit campaign contributions.
“I welcome the investigation,” Ajmera said in a statement Sunday. “The idea that real estate industry contributions that represent less than 10% of my total fundraising in the last election determines where I stand is absurd. My voting record has consistently reflected my value of putting Charlotteans first.
“CLT Ledger’s analysis of campaign finance data from the last election cycle clearly shows where I stand,” Ajmera said, referring to a Charlotte Ledger report that found that among eight city council candidates who raised more than $10,000 in campaign money from the real estate industry in August 2019 Ajmera received the least.
The latest ethics complaint against Bokhari, filed this weekend with the city clerk, uses identical language as the rezoning accusations involving Ajmera. Brandon Forbes, a Charlotte resident and attorney, said he realized that Bokhari had a pattern of leveraging zoning decisions to garner campaign contributions.
“I try to stay out of it as much as possible, but unfortunately, if things aren’t going the way we want them to go … you eventually have to do it yourself,” Forbes told the Observer Monday.
Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment Sunday. But both council members previously called the GOP complaints baseless.
“This is purely a racist, sexist and political attack,” Ajmera said in a statement at the time. “Let me be clear: I’ll not succumb to this pressure to deflect from the real problem of (the) ongoing investigation of Bokhari. This is an intimidation technique to silence us from holding (him) accountable.”
This story was originally published August 16, 2020 at 3:43 PM.
.jpg)