City Rep. questions request to hold off on ethics commission appointment

City Rep. Emma Acosta told ABC-7 she got a call from the chairman of the ethics commission, asking her to hold off on appointing a local attorney to that board.

Stuart Schwartz, chairman of the ethics commission, told ABC-7 his call to Acosta asking her to hold off on her appointment had nothing to do with appointing local attorney Danny Anchondo and everything to do with the process of hearing a complaint about City Manager Tommy Gonzalez.

“When Mr. Schwartz obviously called me, it was an odd call,” Acosta said. “He didn’t want me to make an appointment that day, whether it was Danny or anyone else. And so I was like, ‘Well, wait a minute. Since when does a board member tell a city rep. who to appoint and when to appoint?'”

In the call, which ABC-7 heard a recording of, Schwartz tells Acosta: “We’re serving as a panel for the Tolbert complaint (on Gonzalez), working our way through it. We’ve had a number of executive sessions on it and I don’t see much benefit trying to bring somebody new into the fold at this late time.”

When contacted by ABC-7, Schwartz pointed to the ethics ordinance, which states a member “shall recuse himself … when the member is not present during one hearing of an investigation or disposition of a complaint.”

“There has been no hearing yet on the ethics commission concerning the Jim Tolbert complaint,” Acosta said. “So therefore these new members can still participate because there has been no hearings.”

Schwartz declined an on-camera interview, but told ABC-7: “It shouldn’t be about me or Ms. Acosta being upset. It should be about the process.”

Acosta decided to write a letter to members of the ethics commission expressing her concerns about Schwartz’s call.

“I think it was very unprofessional for him to have done that,” Acosta said. “I don’t know why he did it. I don’t understand why he doesn’t want certain people appointed or new people appointed to the commission. I don’t think that’s his purview.”

Anchondo has been serving on the commission since Acosta appointed him in February.

He told ABC-7 he’s been practicing law for 40 years and had no trouble adapting to the commission.