Great Barrington — It appears that ethics complaints filed against two Great Barrington selectmen over their votes last month on liquor licenses have been deemed unworthy of an investigation by state officials.
In separate and brief Dec. 24 letters to selectmen Ed Abrahams and Bill Cooke, Scott Cole, a special investigator for the State Ethics Commission, said, “Based upon our interview with you, and on any additional necessary additional investigation, we are satisfied that this matter does not require any further action on your part.”
Both Abrahams and Cooke voted on Nov. 26 to grant liquor licenses to the Berkshire Food Co-op and Rubiner’s Cheesemongers. The two were, until a few hours before the meeting, members of the Co-op. Both filed disclosure forms with town clerk Marie Ryan and canceled their memberships before the vote.
Abrahams said he had, during the course of his membership, received rebates from the Co-op. The largest was about $7, so it never occurred to him that there would be any financial conflict.
“I’m not surprised,” Abrahams told The Edge when asked for his reaction to the letter. “The rules are very clear.”
Abrahams said all elected and appointed government officials in the state take an ethics exam every other year. There is a phone number officials can call if they have a question and need to talk to someone at the ethics commission.
Abrahams does vote on matters concerning the town’s public library system. Abrahams is a former chair of the library board of trustees and remains chairman of the Friends of the Great Barrington Libraries, which supports the libraries’ fundraising and public relations efforts. Since there is no financial gain as a result of those votes, Abrahams says the ethics commission has advised him that there is no conflict.
“The closest call would have been this one,” Abrahams said of the liquor license granted to the Co-op. “I never thought of [the Co-op membership] as being anything more than a discount card at the Big Y.”
Cooke said the letter he received was virtually identical to the one Abrahams provided to The Edge. The letters were marked “confidential” because, pursuant to state law, the ethics commission does not disclose the identity of complainants unless a formal investigation process is launched.
Neither Abrahams nor Cooke know who filed the complaints, though Cooke said he has heard rumours.
“I’ve heard tons of rumours,” Cooke said. “Take your own wild guess.”
After the complaints were filed, The Edge contacted several package store owners in town and they all denied having filed the complaints. Robert Mellion, a lobbyist and general counsel for the Massachusetts Package Store Association, who, at the Nov. 26 meeting, spoke on behalf of the liquor store owners objecting to the additional licenses, denied having filing the complaint. An Edge inquiry was the first he had heard about the matter.
There were a number of package store owners at the meeting who objected to the issuance of the licenses. None of them claimed credit for filing the complaint. Without Cooke’s and Abrahams’ votes, the motion to grant liquor licenses to the Co-op and Rubiner’s Cheesemonger’s would have failed, since selectmen Steve Bannon and Dan Bailly voted against issuing those licenses.
Selectman Kate Burke also disclosed a possible conflict of interest. Burke had worked for Rubiner’s from 2011 to 2016. In addition, as general manager of the Great Barrington Farmers Market, there are grants from the Co-op that pass through the market, but they do not affect her employment, Burke has said.
The package store owners argued that they were not afraid of increased competition but were concerned about the lack of training the new licensees would have in detecting underage purchasers. One package store owner, Joe Domaney, held aloft a stack of fake identification cards his store had confiscated from would-be underage buyers.
At that Nov. 24 meeting, the selectboard voted 3–2 to abandon its current liquor license policy until such time as it could come up with a better one. Voting for were Abrahams, Cooke and Burke. Bannon and Bailly voted to keep the current policy on the books.
Editor’s note: this article has been revised to specify what state ethics law says about the legality of Abrahams voting on matters related to the town’s public libraries.
