SO FAR, NO CASES HEARD

Ethics Board Chair

Kim Muller Resigns

By JIM KEVLIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

ONEONTA – A year and a month since it was revived and with no cases heard yet, the Otsego County Board of Ethics has suffered another setback.

Its chairman, Kim Muller, the former Oneonta mayor who recently stepped down at Otsego County Democratic chair, has advised county board Chair David Bliss, R-Cooperstown/Town of Middlefield, that she will depart when her term expired at the end of this month.

“My professional obligations are likely to become an impediment for scheduling Committee meetings moving forward,” she said in an e-mail to Bliss.

Serving with Michelle Catan, who operates the small-business office at the Otsego County Chamber, and Brett Holleran, a Town of Oneonta business owner, Muller said, “We’ve made a great deal of progress with developing policies and procedures, and the Committee will be well positioned to move forward.”

Herself a former county representative, Muller also thanked County Attorney Ellen Coccoma for her advice.

Bliss told his colleagues Wednesday at their monthly meeting that Muller had resigned, and said he will begin looking for a replacement.

The county ethics board was created in the early 1990s by the Board of Representatives, but was never populated.

In the wake of nepotism concerns in the county Sheriff’s Department during 2017, the need for an ethics board was raised repeatedly at county board meetings and Bliss, not yet chair, took the lead in seeking members.

On Nov. 1, six days before the 2017 election, the county board adopted a nepotism policy, and also named Catan and Veterans Affairs Director Jack Henson as the first to members of the three-member board.

Henson decided to retire soon after, and resigned, and Muller and Holleran was named in the new year.  The board had meet three or four times under Muller’s leadership, developing ground rules to guide board hearings, but no complaints have yet been solicited or hearings held.