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Ruling in ethics case helps two officials
By AMY WIMMER, Times Staff Writer
TREASURE ISLAND -- The question of whether the state Ethics Commission thinks city officials pushed through land development rules that contained benefits for their own wallets could be settled soon. An assistant attorney general ruled last week there is no probable cause to consider ethics violations against Mayor Leon Atkinson or Commissioner Butch Ellsworth. His recommendation will be presented to the state Ethics Commission March 13, just days after voters replace at least two city commissioners in the March 4 city election. Atkinson and Ellsworth said that despite the assistant attorney general's recommendation, they will travel to Tallahassee to defend themselves before the Ethics Commission. The panel can reverse the recommendation and find probable cause for an ethics violation, then transfer the cases to an administrative law judge. Ultimately, both could face punishments ranging from reprimands and fines to removal from office. But the recommendation implies the ethics investigation is losing steam. The other two officials being investigated are Gary Dion and Roseanne Petit, both members of the city's Planning and Zoning Board. Walt Herring and Rhonda Anderson, the former Treasure Island residents who filed the complaints, say they included Dion and Petit in their allegations. But the Ethics Commission can release information only on Atkinson and Ellsworth because both relinquished their confidentiality rights. In his recommendation, Assistant Attorney General James Peterson III wrote that Ellsworth did not violate any rules because his employer does not own any property in Treasure Island. Ellsworth is general manager of John's Pass Marina and is employed by A.E. Rice, which is owned by Agnes Rice, the company's president. Her son Sid Rice is vice president. "Both Agnes Rice and Sid Rice own a number of properties in Treasure Island, including properties where A.E. Rice Inc. operates its businesses," Peterson wrote, making a distinction between the Rices and their corporation. "There is no evidence that A.E. Rice Inc. owns any property in Treasure Island or that the corporation would otherwise obtain any special benefit." The complaint alleged that the four city officials voted in favor of land development regulations that could bring them profit. Petit, Dion and Atkinson own properties along the strip of Gulf Boulevard made more developable by the new rules. Ellsworth manages the John's Pass Marina for the Rice family, Treasure Island's largest land owner. The complaint was filed months before an October vote that infuriated residents who thought commissioners were trying to subvert the voters' will in a referendum planned for Nov. 5. The complaint alleged that Ellsworth and Atkinson acted unethically when they sent the proposed land development regulations to the Planning and Zoning Board in May. Herring and Anderson, who helped lead a petition drive last summer that led to a voter referendum in November that gave unprecedented development control to Treasure Island voters, moved to the Virgin Islands shortly before the referendum. "The thing that really irks me is that the two people who signed the complaint don't even live in the continental United States," Ellsworth said. "They don't have to answer to anything, but I have to hire an attorney, and I have to go to Tallahassee." Herring, reached Thursday at the Virgin Islands Daily News, where he is an editor, said city officials should have known better than to cast votes that benefited themselves or, in Ellsworth's case, his employer. "Mr. Ellsworth knew he had a conflict of interest," Herring said. "He continued to vote, knowing the will of the people." According to the investigative report on Ellsworth's potential conflict of interest, the commissioner in 1998 asked City Attorney Jim Denhardt for an Ethics Commission opinion on whether he can vote on items related to his employer. In an informal opinion provided by an Ethics Commission staff lawyer, Ellsworth was "required to abstain from voting" on issues related to special permissions for his employer or the charitable organization Ellsworth was a part of. Denhardt forwarded this information to Ellsworth and the rest of the City Commission, calling the Ethics Commission's ruling "a fairly restrictive view" and "much more restrictive than what I anticipated." Denhardt went on to say Ellsworth was "entitled to discuss these matters" related to his employer but could not vote on them. Ellsworth points out that he tried several times last year to get guidance from the Ethics Commission on whether he should vote on the land development regulations when they were formally approved in October. Each time, he said, he was told the commission could not answer his question because of the continuing ethics investigation prompted by Herring and Anderson.
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