The three-member Yonkers Board of Ethics ruled Tasha Diaz did nothing wrong when she accepted a $1,000 campaign contribution and then shortly thereafter introduced the now infamous ordinance that radically increased the city’s noise limits. You can read the transcript of Diaz’s testimony before the board HERE.
The board based its ruling on a narrow interpretation of the Yonkers ethics codes. The code allows public officials to receive a “financial benefit or gift” when the money is given as a campaign contribution.
The Board was responding to a complaint referred to it by the Westchester DA’s office. The complaint was lodged by Peter Cohn, founder of Quieter Yonkers. The complaint alleges that Diaz introduced her 2023 revision of the noise ordinance to favor the contributor of a $1000 campaign contribution. The ethics board found that Diaz did not violate the city’s ethics code, specifically the prohibition on improper “financial benefits and gifts.” That section of the code allows for campaign contributions.
Given the track record of the board of ethics, this decision comes as no surprise. And while the ruling itself may have cleared Diaz, the official transcript of Diaz’s testimony makes it very clear that Diaz has absolutely no explanation for why she proposed an increase in the residential noise level.
Her testimony about apartment residents turning up their TVs to drown out construction noise, worries about noise made by nighttime adult swimmers near her building, and her own mother’s reckless lodging of 40 noise complaints with the police contains absolutely no reasoning pertinent to the ordinance she sponsored.
It is somehow not within the purview of the ethics board to question why all of Diaz’s rationale’s are wildly incredible — the ordinance itself does not apply to any of the situations Diaz described.
The board’s narrow interpretation of the city’s ethics rules ignores sections §§C1A-6, C1A-11, and C1A-21, which related to conflicts of interest, disclosure, and the integrity of public service.
These obligations should apply with even greater force when the legislation imposes adverse public-health consequences, including risks that can become genuinely severe, even lethal, at scale, for an entire city.
The Yonkers Board of Ethics has six members — five were at the meeting. They included Louis Mosiello (chair), Dennis Gallego, Bruce Donnelly, Kathleen Ennis and Maria Derose. Matt Gallagher, the city corporation counsel, was also at the meeting, serving as the board’s statutory counsel.
While this group is no doubt well intentioned, it’s quite remarkable that no one in the room compared Diaz’s rationale for the ordinance with the actual ordinance that she sponsored. If they had, it would have been very clear that Diaz’s motive related to something rather different than the public interest.
[written by Peter Cohn, who brought the complaint against Diaz and testified in front of the board in June]
