The weeks-long saga over behavior by council members Joe Butner and Bill LeBeau at the Jan. 8 Camp Verde Town Council meeting seemingly reached its conclusion at the council meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 19, when the council twice voted 5-1 against accepting letters of reprimand against the council members.
Both LeBeau and Butner recused themselves from voting on their own letter of reprimand.
Councilwoman Robin Whatley was the solitary vote in favor of the reprimand in both cases.
At the Jan. 8 meeting, when discussing an application by Bruce George to be reappointed to the Planning & Zoning Commission, Butner asked George about an unconfirmed police report mentioning his name. George was unaware of the month- old report. Yet, he withdrew his nomination rather than discuss the report, though he later filed a complaint with the Town of Camp Verde alleging improper conduct by Butner.
George denied the accusation, which was based on a second-hand witness, when asked by The Camp Verde Journal. He was never charged by the Camp Verde Marshal’s Office.
On Feb. 5, George agreed to withdraw his complaint against Butner, preferring to allow the council to resolve the issue amongst themselves rather than spend money for an outside investigation into the incident, as a formal complaint required.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Mayor Charlie German expressed frustration at how the incident had been handled both by Butner and LeBeau, who had received the police report from the Camp Verde Marshal’s Office after filing a public records request.
German took issue with how the two council members had blindsided the other members of the council as well as George. He argued that while LeBeau and Butner had every right to request public records from the CVMO, they nevertheless had a responsibility to act as members of the council once they had the documents.
“If you come and say, ‘I went as a private citizen —I don’t have to send a copy or staff doesn’t have to send a copy to the rest of the council,’ I would say that’s probably OK, except we had an item on the agenda,” German said at the meeting. “Their actions circumvented [the public’s] voice, who elected five of us and the manager as a hiree. We didn’t get to debate how that was to be handled.
“And quite honestly, Camp Verde, I have to seriously consider whether I want to continue to serve a community that allows that kind of standard to handle because my ethics have been compromised. The rest of the council was left out.”
The letters of reprimand were drafted by German and complained of “willful intent to circumvent notification to the rest of the Council” by keeping the letter between Butner and LeBeau and would have removed financial support for the two council members for their attendance of the 2020 League of Arizona Cities and Towns’ annual conference.
Butner and LeBeau argued in their defense that the town code does not stipulate rules about disclosure of documents to the rest of council, and that punishing them for it without a warning would be unfair.
“There’s nothing in any of the policies or procedures, any of the code of conduct, that says I can’t hold it for 20 years,” LeBeau said. “I did not trust that if I had brought the information forward that it would have been handled above board.
“I figured it would be covered up …. But there’s nothing in this letter that is substantiated in any way by any documents that regulate the town or the council.
“I’m sure we’ve all heard of an ex post facto law — that’s a law that looks backwards after events have already occurred, and say, ‘Oh that was wrong, we’re going to punish you for that now,’” Butner said. “There was no warning. There was no advisory to me that I would do some- thing wrong if I were to bring this report to the council meeting and put it into the record and pass it out to my fellow council members, which is what I tried to do at that January the 8th, 2020 meeting.
“And now there is before this council a letter of censure and reprimand and imposition of sanctions and so forth. All of this without any prior warning that what I was doing was wrong,” said Butner, who is a former judge.
“I wasn’t trying to short- change our town council. And I will apologize to my fellow town council members at this time for not providing that information in advance of the meeting. I got it the day before, and I should have gotten it to you I guess when I got it the day before. But I didn’t do anything wrong, and I didn’t violate any codes or provisions.”
The argument made by Butner and LeBeau was echoed by Camp Verde Vice Mayor Dee Jenkins, who argued that the sanction seemed to be less related to the issue of documents not being provided in a timely manner, which she said happens frequently for all manner of reasons, but rather related to the specific contents of this letter, which she said was embarrassing to an individual.
Jenkins argued that the council members should not punished for not providing the documents in a timely fashion when the actual issue was the content, not the timeliness.
The arguments were enough to convince German.
“I think what I am looking for, certainly, is a change in behavior,” German said. “I would move to dismiss these two letters … but I want a commitment from this council to rewrite our policies and procedures to get it completely understood in clear language so a common person, like a school teacher or ex school teacher [an implied reference to German himself] would be able to under- stand it.”
The council has already begun plans to adjust their procedures regarding relevant documents for meetings, though according to Town Manager Russ Martin, a potential change to public records policies looks unlikely, since legally, the CVMO cannot redact information from public records requests aside from that which is relevant to an ongoing investigation.
Since George had not been contacted by CVMO in the month-old complaint prior to the Jan. 8 meeting, it was not clear if the investigation was ongoing or not.
As the lone voice of dissent in the decision to move on without reprimanding the council members, Whatley expressed some desire to bring the issue back up in the future.
“I would like an agenda item to formally warn Mr. Joe Butner and Mr. Bill LeBeau,” Whatley said.
Whether Whatley’s proposal goes anywhere in a future meeting remains to be seen.
On Thursday, Feb. 20, George informed Town Manager Russ Martin of his intention to resign from the Camp Verde Board of Adjustments, which he also sits on.
In addition to George’s complaint against Butner, former councilwoman Carol German submitted
a complaint against Camp Verde Planning & Zoning Commissioner Chris McPhail for speaking out against Butner at the Jan. 15 council meeting, when she said that she was “appalled” by Butner’s “unacceptable behavior” and that Butner creates a “hostile work environment” for members of the commission.
McPhail has recently announced she is a candidate for Camp Verde Town Council.
German’s complaint argued that it was out- of-bounds for a town appointee to “verbally assault” a member of the council in that way.
