BRAMSON, KAYE GUILTY: Ethics Charges Sustained Against New Rochelle Mayor, Council Member for Illegal Votes to Benefit Sustainable Westchester
Ethics Board Decision Requires Criminal Referral to DA, Renders All Contracts Null and Void.
NEW ROCHELLE, NY (December 5, 2023) — The New Rochelle Ethics Board has sustained charges of ethic violations against Mayor Noam Bramson and Council Member Sara Kaye filed by Robert Cox on October 30, 2023.
READ: Bramson-Kaye Ethics Report 2023
In a letter dated December 1, 2023, The City of New Rochele Board of Ethics notified City Manager Kathleen Gill of its decision to sustain allegations made by Robert Cox dated October 30, 2023 that Mayor Noam Bramson and City Council Member Sara Kaye voted on Resolutions authorizing the City of New Rochelle to enter into contracts with Sustainable Westchester despite a prohibited interest, serving on the Non-Profit’s Board of Directors.
A City Council member is not prohibited from sitting on the Board of a Non-Profit, but under General Municipal Law §803 the City Councilmember must publicly disclose his or her interest in the Non-Profit each time it becomes apparent the City Council may enter into a contract with the Non-Profit, and that written disclosure be made part of and set forth in the official record of the proceedings of the Council. Further, the Council Member shall promptly recuse himself/herself from acting on a matter before the city when acting on the mater or failing to act on the matter.
As described in the complaint, in every relevant meeting of City Council from 2014 to 2023 where a discussion and/or vote occurred involving a Sustainable Westchester program there was not a single instance where Noam Bramson, and later Sara Kaye, stated they were a member of the Board of Directors of Sustainable Westchester, recused themselves, left the room and abstained from voting. On the contrary, they were often active participants in Council discussions while on the Sustainable Westchester board and always voted.
The amateurish “report” prepared by Benjamin W. Sonnenfeldt of Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP stands in stark contrast to the professional report prepared last year by Peter Meisels of the same firm in response to my sustained ethics complaint against Bramson for pressuring the City Manager to appoint him as Development Commissioner.
The phrase “half-assing it” comes to mind.
Sonnenfeldt may as well have written his report on a cocktail napkin. Meisels, by comparison, wrote what amounts to a treatise on municipal ethics — READ HERE.
My complaint provided every detail — dates, resolution numbers, meeting minutes and video archives — but Sonnenfeldt failed to reference any of this information to detail a single charge against Bramson and Kaye. There is not one violation as he would have it but dozens.
It is only possible to understand the scope and conclusions of the extremely thin Sonnenfeldt report by repeated references to the original, highly-detailed ethics complaint:
READ: Ethics Complaint - Mayor Noam Bramson, Council Member Sara Kaye
As it may be helpful to criminal investigators, I will sketch out those violations here. The complaint covers seven sets of discussions, including votes and contracts. I compiled all the relevant videos into a 43-minute clip file, then uploaded them to my Vimeo video-sharing account:
There were discussions and/or votes on these dates and likely more where Bramson/Kaye violated New York State Law each and every time.
Community Choice Aggregation Program 2014-37 (March 18, 2014)
Community Choice Aggregation Program: 2015-150 (July 21, 2015)
Community Choice Aggregation Program: 2015-176 (September 15, 2015)
Community Choice Aggregation Program: 2022-51 (April 19, 2022)
Recollect App: 2018-203 (October 16, 2018)
Recollect App: 2020-76 (June 16, 2020)
Climate Action Draft: 2022-95 (June 21, 2022)
Sustainable Westchester / G&S Solar: 2021-24 (March 9, 2021)
Environmental Community Education and Outreach
Next Steps
Contracts cancelled
It appears to be required that all contracts with Sustainable Westchester are now null and void.
This will include the unpopular “opt-out” from Sustainable Westchester as the default Energy Services Companies (ESCO) for all New Rochelle ratepayers.
The Board of Ethics determined the Sustainable Westchester contracts were arrived at “in violation of the spirit and intent of GML, are inconsistent with public policy, or suggest self-interest, partiality or economic impropriety”, because Bramson and Kaye failed to disclose their prohibited interests.
The Board of Ethics punted on what to do about the contracts, leaving it to the City Manager and Corporation Counsel to determine what, if any, next steps may be taken with respect to the Sustainable Westchester contracts. This will be one of the next shoes to drop.
Criminal Referral
The other shoe will be a criminal referral.
It appears there will be a criminal referral to the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office because the law says if a person willfully and knowingly violates the law by entering into a contract in which a person has a prohibited interest, or by failing, when required, to disclose an interest in a contract, the person may be guilty of a misdemeanor. It will be Bramson’s second criminal referral in 18 months.
Remove Unethical Ethics Board Member
Ethics Board Member David Blumenthal has serious, documented personal integrity issues including violating the confidentiality of the ethics board. He is not fit to serve. He should be removed and a criminal referral made based on non-public information in the hands of City officials.
Overhaul Ethics Board
The entire Ethics Board is not fit for purpose. In response to my previous ethics complaints including Noam Bramson in 2022, City Clerk Michelle Oliveros recused herself. As a result, the 2022 Bramson investigation dragged on for weeks because David Blumenthal refused to vote and only did so when the report was watered down. He did the same thing with the recent Bramson/Kaye investigation. My 2022 ethics complaint against David Blumenthal did not proceed because he was the target and Oliveros recused herself. If Oliveros recused herself in each of my previous ethics complaints why did she vote on this one?
The New Rochelle Board of Ethics is required to review any prohibited interest with the New Rochelle Corporation Counsel. This did not happen with Noam Bramson. Sara Kaye and Sustainable Westchester.
Sara Kaye Emails
I am still owed hundreds if not thousands of emails involving Sara Kaye.
Kaye repeatedly resisted the production of emails on her city account to/from Sustainable Westchester. The City waited months even though these emails were all public records contained on a city-owned central email server. At any time, the New Rochelle IT Department could have taken them with mentioning it to Kaye at all but never did.
It later emerged that Sara Kaye was also withholding public record emails from within her Gmail account. Further, the emails from her Gmail account contained email exchanges with Noam Bramson’s city email account that were covered but not provided to me under FOIL so Bramson emails were also withheld.
I received information that Sara Kaye was using her husband’s work email account. Kaye refused to cooperate to produce the emails and the firm’s lawyers got involved.
David Kaye is a partner at Ropes & Gray LLP is a global law firm with $2.718 billion in revenue across 13 offices located in the United States, Asia and Europe. The firm has more than 1,500 lawyers and professionals worldwide, and its clients include corporations and financial institutions, government agencies, universities, and health care organizations. It was founded in 1865 in Boston, Massachusetts by John Codman Ropes and John Chipman Gray.
When the City proved unwilling to subpoena Ropes & Gray for the emails, I filed a new FOIL for all emails between newrochelleny.com amend ropesgray.com. I was told there were 250 such emails. I was told I would get them weeks ago but still have not received any of them.
Volunteer New York!
Noam Bramson used his elective office to steer money to a second tax-exempt organization where he had an undisclosed conflict of interest.
Unlike in the Sustainable Westchester case, Bramson did not report his personal and professional relationship with Alisa H. Kesten on financial disclosure forms submitted to the New Rochelle Board of Ethics.
Alisa H. Kesten was Executive Director of Volunteer New York! from January 2010 until June 2020. Before that, she was Chair of the Board from June 2008 to December 2009.
Six years earlier, Kesten was Bramson’s campaign manager when he ran unsuccessfully for Ronald C. Tocci’s seat representing the 91st New York State Assembly District.
RELATED:
New Rochelle Mayor, Council Member Feathered Mayor’s Nest at Sustainable Westchester
Ethics Complaint - Mayor Noam Bramson, Council Member Sara Kaye
Not bad reporting for a guy 3,000 miles away 😀
I forgot to mention the corrupt creep council person, who I hope it’s going to be thrown off the city Council now and banned forever serving again.