Do officials on Sustainable Westchester board have conflicts? Questions face New Rochelle

Sustainable Westchester, the nonprofit corporation that serves as the default supplier of electricity for 38% of Westchester households, finds itself engulfed in an ethics dispute that invalidated New Rochelle’s contract for power and may spill over into other municipalities.

The problems in New Rochelle have deepened with a second ethics complaint filed by independent journalist Robert Cox, who in December detailed his investigation for his Substack publication, Words in Edgewise.

That’s when New Rochelle City Manager Kathleen Gill took action following an investigation by the New Rochelle Board of Ethics into Cox's complaint. It focused on votes taken by then-Mayor Noam Bramson and City Councilwoman Sara Kaye, who both served on the Sustainable Westchester Board of Directors.

Cox filed his first complaint on Oct. 30. By Dec. 1, the Ethics Board forwarded its findings to Gill. She nullified New Rochelle's contract with Sustainable Westchester, after finding that neither Bramson nor Kaye had publically disclosed their positions with Sustainable Westchester before voting on the contract in 2022. She said both should have recused themselves from the matter.

“State law requires, at a minimum, that the official publically disclose,” Gill said. “If they don’t make that disclosure, that makes the contract null and void.”

More: Sustainable Westchester inks new supply deal that could hike electric prices

Gill’s actions raised eyebrows in Westchester's renewable energy movement. Sustainable Westchester was formed in 2014 as a collaboration of Westchester municipalities and Westchester County, and now serves as the default provider of electrical supply for 29 Westchester municipalities, with a good portion of the supply coming from renewable energy.

New Rochelle is party to Sustainable Westchester's "community choice aggregation" energy-supply contract covering more than 20 municipalities in southern Westchester, signed in 2022. The two-year fixed contract, which expires at year's end, charges 15.5 cents per kilowatt hour for renewable energy supply and 13.6 cents for standard energy.

The variable rate charged by Con Edison for February was 9.5 cents per kilowatt hour, said Con Ed spokesman Alan Drury. Residents, who are enrolled in Sustainable Westchester's rate system by default, can opt out of the program online.

Jim Kuster, co-chair of Sustainable Westchester, said the growing dependence on renewables for Westchester energy is an important piece of the region's climate-change policy.

"The greenhouse gas reduction as a result of residents subscribing to the renewable option, which the vast majority do, is greater than any other greenhouse gas reduction initiative in Westchester," he said.

No disclosure by Yadira Ramos-Herbert

To reauthorize New Rochelle's contract with Sustainable Westchester, Gill brought it back for a new vote in February. By then, Bramson, who had not run for re-election after serving 18 years as mayor, was executive director of Sustainable Westchester, having taken the job in January. And Councilwoman Kaye remained on the nonprofit’s board.

While Kaye recused herself this time, Bramson’s successor, Mayor Yadira Ramos-Herbert, voted to reauthorize the contract in February. But that came just three days after she attended the 2024 Sustainable Westchester annual meeting as a voting member.

Cox then filed a new ethics complaint, citing Ramos-Herbert's failure to disclose her position with the nonprofit before the contract vote.

“Now there’s a new question,” said Gill. “If she was required to disclose and recuse herself from the vote, then that contract will also be null and void.”

New Rochelle resident Richard Grayson welcomed Gill's action to nullify the first contract.

"She has a backbone," he said.

Ramos-Herbert did not return messages seeking comment.

Bramson declined comment on New Rochelle’s current dilemma. He told Tax Watch that he left the Sustainable Westchester board in early 2022, several months before the vote on the first contract with Sustainable Westchester. The New Rochelle Ethics Board report noted that both Bramson and Kaye disclosed their Sustainable Westchester affiliations on their financial disclosure statements but not at the meeting where the vote took place.

As far as taking his new position with Sustainable Westchester, Bramson said he had been off the nonprofit's board for close to a year when Sustainable Westchester Executive Director Nina Orville announced her resignation at the end of 2022. He said he began discussions about the post in early 2023, and reached agreement on employment in May 2023.

In January, he began the new job, which pays $185,000 a year.

Sustainable Westchester, officials do not see conflicts

Sustainable Westchester, which also promotes solar energy and sustainable landscaping practices, stands by the structure of its nonprofit consortium of Westchester County local governments, according to a statement issued on Thursday.  The Mount Kisco-based organization, with an annual budget of $1.6 million, recently won a $5 million grant from the federal government to help businesses afford geothermal heating systems.

Kuster, in the statement, said there’s no reason for members of Sustainable Westchester's board who serve as elected officials to recuse themselves when they vote on its contracts because board members receive no financial benefit from their service.

More: Electric rates to rise sharply for 90,000 households in Sustainable Westchester program

“Indeed, across nearly a decade of constructive municipal partnership, no prior concerns about conflicts have been raised,” the statement said.

Mark Davies, an authority on municipal ethics, and former executive director of the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board, said he saw no ethical problem with the current set-up under state ethics law.

“I don’t see that there’s an issue here,” said Davies. “These officials, who receive no pay, are placed there as part of their municipal job. They want to protect the municipality. From a municipal perspective, it’s good for them to be there.”

Among Sustainable Westchester's longtime employees is Westchester Power Program Director Dan Welsh, who has served on the Lewisboro Town Board since 2008. Welsh said he abstains from voting on Sustainable Westchester contracts.

North Salem Supervisor Warren Lucas, who serves as Sustainable Westchester's treasurer, has also voted for the Sustainable Westchester contracts at the North Salem Town Board, where he has served for 34 years. The former president of the Westchester County Municipal Officials Association said he's at a loss to understand how he could have a prohibited interest in a contract with Sustainable Westchester when he receives no financial benefit from it.

He said that Westchester municipalities and Westchester County created Sustainable Westchester, so it makes sense that its board includes officials from those entities.

“We all voted for exactly the same stuff,” he said. “I’m still at a loss to see that it’s an ethical issue.”

Nevertheless, Lucas said he planned to consult the North Salem Board of Ethics for guidance.

"If it's a big deal for somebody, I might as well," he said.

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David McKay Wilson writes about tax issues and government accountability. Follow him on Twitter @davidmckay415 or email him at dwilson3@lohud.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Ethics complaints face Sustainable Westchester deal in New Rochelle NY