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Dunwoody City Councilwoman Adrian Bonser has formally responded to an ethics complaint against her, asking the Board of Ethics to dismiss the complaint because there is not enough evidence to support allegations that she leaked confidential information to the public.
Bonser’s attorney Matthew Reeves wrote a letter to the ethics board members disputing the merits of the complaint against Bonser and the investigative report that led to it.
Earlier this year, Mayor Mike Davis hired former DeKalb County District Attorney Bob Wilson to look into the source of leaks from the City Council’s executive sessions. Wilson alleged in a report that Bonser shared information from the council’s private discussions about the Georgetown redevelopment initiative known as Project Renaissance with someone who then shared it with local blogger Bob Lundsten. Lundsten refused to reveal the source to Wilson.
“The Dunwoody Ethics Code requires admissible evidence to support ethics complaints,” the letter states. “The Complaint and the Wilson Report rely on hearsay, namely Mr. Lundsten’s hearsay allegation that an anonymous source alleged that Dr. Bonser divulged Executive Session discussions about the disposition of the PVC Farm.”
Wilson’s investigative report also included emails between Bonser and constituents as evidence that she told confidential information to the public. But in his letter, Reeves argues that by Feb. 12, when the emails were dated, information about the land transactions was already widely reported.
“Dr. Bonser was the respondent in these redacted emails, and she encouraged the constituent to make his views known to elected officials and expressed her own opinions; she did not divulge confidential Executive Session discussions,” Reeves wrote. “There is nothing unethical about an elected official exchanging opinions with a constituent about a public matter previously reported on WSBTV.”
The letter also knocks Wilson for not including in his report a Feb. 8 email from Dunwoody resident Kerry de Vallette to Davis, Bonser and Councilwoman Lynn Deutsch in which he told them that someone had divulged details about Project Renaissance.
“The Wilson Report did not discuss Mr. de Vallette’s evidence, and apparently Mr. Wilson’s $50,000 of work did not reveal this piece of evidence which is clearly exculpatory for Dr. Bonser,” Reeves states.
The Dunwoody Board of Ethics is scheduled to meet on Aug. 7. The board was to discuss the complaint against Bonser at its July 10 meeting, but chose to wait until it received Bonser’s formal response. Dunwoody law provides 30 days to respond to ethics complaints.