Ethics Commission derails Tenorio’s strategy

I get it. Council member Daphne Tenorio understandably and probably quite desperately wants to prove she committed absolutely no ethics violations in a situation involving a pending economic development project for Kyle. But, in order to do that, she must first be charged with committing any ethics violations. Someone (or some thing) must allege she did something unethical.

So what did she do? She put The Kyle Report on trial.

Last night, I walked into an Ethics Commission meeting at City Hall fully expecting to cover a hearing on possible ethics complaints filed against Tenorio. It turned out to be a hearing on the ethics and journalism integrity of The Kyle Report, and the Ethics Commission exonerated this publication of any claims of making false accusations.

I’m not going to go into this at length because I prefer to report on the news more than being the subject of a news story and what happened at last night’s Ethics Commission meeting put me at the center of this story. Apparently Tenorio’s strategy was to prove she was completely innocent of any and all claims of ethical violations made The Kyle Report, since it is also apparent no one else has made any other such claims. At least, not so far. The obvious first step in this strategy was to get the Ethics Commission to rule what was reported in The Kyle Report actually constituted allegations of wrongdoing.

She never made it past the first step.

She is not going to have the opportunity to defend herself against any charges of wrongdoing — again, at least for now — because the members of the Ethics Commissions, after much discussion and debate and trying to figure out exactly what constituted an allegation and whether parts of sentences should be considered out of context from the complete sentences, voted unanimously last night that in some 13 statements Tenorio cited from The Kyle Report, not a single one constituted an actual allegation of any ethical violation.

So now the obvious question is "What happens next?". Does the entire matter drop right here or will there be any additional investigations or discussions on what actually transpired? Will the public ever learn the truth or will the City wash the entire matter through its recently created Stormwater Utility, wipe their hands of the entire affair and actually lend some credence to the notion of non-transparency in municipal government, especially when it comes to protecting one of their own?

Not only does the public deserve to know the truth, Tenorio deserves the opportunity to clear away any dark clouds hovering over her political reputation.

Through no fault of the Ethics Commission, neither transpired at last night’s commission meeting