City ethics board needs additional members

The City of Rhinelander ethics board ended its eight-month hiatus last Monday, welcoming a new member and discussing how to best recruit additional qualified candidates to fill two vacant alternate positions. City attorney Steve Sorenson also took the opportunity to provide a refresher on how the body functions. Because a member was missing, leaving the group one short of a quorum, the panel could not take any formal action.
Membership and recruitment
The committee currently has two open seats — first alternate and second alternate — following the most recent round of mayoral reappointments. Sorenson told members they have an obligation to actively recruit.
“You’ve been appointed by the mayor because he thinks you’re good, but he doesn’t know everybody in town,” Sorenson said. “People you know that you think would be good, please have them contact (City Clerk) Austyn (Zarda) or contact the mayor, because we really would like to operate at a full complement.”
Sorenson suggested that people with professional backgrounds requiring ethical standards make particularly strong candidates — naming ministers, teachers and university faculty as examples.

Committee chair Michael Miller introduced new member Bill Freudenberg, who was appointed by the mayor in the most recent election cycle to a presumed three-year term running through 2029. The chair noted that the committee remains short-handed and encouraged anyone interested to come forward.
Current member terms are as follows: Michael Miller through 2029, Nate Sheppard through 2027, Freundenberg through 2029, Ashley McLaughlin through 2028, and Doug Nelson through 2027.
How the committee works
With a new member at the table, Sorenson provided a detailed walk-through of the complaint process.
Complaints, Sorenson said, should be directed to him or to the committee chair, who will assess whether the matter falls within the committee’s jurisdiction. If it does, the accused party is notified and given the right to request either an open or closed hearing.
“They have a right to know exactly what the complaint against them is — what the accusations are — and they also have a right to know who filed the complaint,” Sorenson said.
After a hearing, the committee deliberates in closed session and votes on whether to forward a recommendation to the Common Council, which retains the authority to take any final action. If the committee finds no basis for a complaint at the initial review stage, the matter is dismissed without a public record.
Sorenson drew a distinction between violations of the state ethics code — which can carry criminal penalties and would be referred to the district attorney — and violations of the city’s local ethics ordinance, which governs behavior and public trust but does not carry criminal weight.
“You can violate the state code and go to jail — it could be a felony — but you can also not violate the state code and still violate the local ethics behavioral code, because the local code has a behavioral component the state code does not,” he said. In those cases, the committee can recommend censure or, in more serious cases, removal — though the council makes the final call.
Sorenson cited a recent example from another Wisconsin county in which a board member was removed following an ethics finding even though no law had been broken. “He just did something that really screwed up public trust,” Sorenson said.
The committee has not yet forwarded any complaint to the full council since its founding, though members acknowledged they have had a small number of preliminary internal discussions over the years.
Confidentiality a cornerstone of the committee’s work
Sorenson stressed that strict confidentiality is essential to the committee’s function, warning that information discussed during proceedings could cause serious harm if disclosed carelessly.
“This board has to have tremendous confidentiality and trust, because things will be said in this room that if taken out of context could really be hurtful to people,” Sorenson said. “We’ll hear things that would be hurtful but aren’t really true.”
He noted that complaints can surface allegations that turn out to be unfounded, and that protecting the reputations of those involved — on both sides of a complaint — depends on members treating everything discussed in the room with discretion.
Ethics training on the horizon
Sorenson also told the committee he is preparing to approach the mayor about scheduling ethics training for the full Common Council, noting that misconceptions about local government ethics are widespread.
“I hear it all the time — people say, ‘I can’t vote on this,’ and they say, ‘Why not? I live next door to this person.’ That’s not an ethics violation,” he said. “But if you own the house next door and you’re tearing it down, that’s an ethics violation.”
He noted that being rude or unhelpful is not an ethics violation, but breaching a fiduciary duty is — a distinction many elected officials do not fully understand.
Sorenson said he has conducted ethics training for three cities and two counties since the last election cycle and hopes to schedule a council session in Rhinelander in the coming months, possibly supplemented by a recorded video for city employees.