An attorney retained to investigate an alleged ethics violation against Fountain Hills Town Councilman Allen Skillicorn has returned a report stating they found no “legal sufficiency exists regarding a violation of the Rules of Procedure by (Skillicorn).”

In her report to the Town Council, attorney Tina Vannucci with the Fitzgibbons Law Offices in Casa Grande said, “I do not find that Councilman Skillicorn engaged in any conduct that violated the Code of Ethics by filing the MCSO report or by issuing his press release that was the basis for the patch.com article.

“He pursued a course of conduct that he sincerely believed, right or wrong, that would reduce the political rhetoric that could lead to potential violence.

“For the reasons stated (in the report) this investigator concludes that Councilman Allen Skillicorn did not (violate) the Code of Ethics as alleged by Price.”

The alleged ethics violation stemmed from a letter to the editor in The Fountain Hills Times in February in which Diane Price used the phrase “ready, fire aim” in reference to what was in her view haphazard actions by a group of Council members led by Skillicorn.

Skillicorn subsequently alleged he considered this wording to be a threat to himself and made a report to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO).

“I thought some of their statements crossed a line,” Skillicorn said in a statement issued after the investigator’s report was released. “I issued a press release to hopefully stop the rhetoric from turning violent. Instead of dialing down the rhetoric, Price decided to file an ethics complaint against me, but an independent investigator determined there was no ethics violation in sending out a press release calling for civility.

“We can have political disagreements without being disagreeable. There is no need for over-the-top social media posts and there certainly is no need to file baseless ethics complaints that waste time and taxpayers’ money. I called for civility in my press release, and I stand by my statement. Given the violence we have seen against public officials, now more than ever, we need to tone down the rhetoric.”

Response

Within 24 hours of the release of the ethics investigator’s report an attorney representing Price asked the Town to reconsider the report, or in lieu of that consider a second ethics complaint from Price.

The attorney, Eugene Mikolajczyk, said the timeline of events reflects in his view that Skillicorn was promoting a false narrative that he knew wasn’t true.

“The Ethics Report exonerates Skillicorn in part because he reported to the (MCSO) letters written by Price that he thought might be threats against him,” Mikolajczyk said in his filing. “As noted in the Report and in the MCSO ‘Incident Report,’ Skillicorn did not believe there were threats. He thought there might be threats. He deferred to the MCSO to investigate and determine if the letters written by Price contained threats.”

He notes that Skillicorn issued his press release several weeks after he had been told by MCSO they did not consider the letter a threat. In his press release, however, Skillicorn names Price and says rhetoric has “escalated to not so subtle death threats.”

“The ethical misconduct came when Skillicorn knew that Price had done nothing wrong,” Mikolajczyk said. “Despite knowing this, Skillicorn victimized Price by portraying her as a violent miscreant when she was not, and himself as a victim of threats from Price when he was not. Price is the victim. The Ethics Report’s omissions and deficiencies perpetuate that status.”