An East Ridge citizen has filed an ethics complaint against Mayor Brent Lambert, saying $3,000 in campaign contributions he received in 2017 amount to gifts for past actions.
Laura Seneker said Lambert called a special meeting on June 2, 2017, “for no apparent reason,” pushed through a resolution that authorized $4 million for infrastructure on Exit 1, and then 12 days later received $5,000 in campaign contributions, $3,000 of which came from developers working on that project.
Lambert hadn’t had a campaign going since 2014, when he finished $9,100 in debt, Seneker’s complaint says. He accepted the contributions, wrote himself a $5,300 check from his campaign and deposited the money into his personal bank account, the complaint says.
Lambert did not return a call for comment Wednesday. But he has previously defended the contributions, saying they were unrelated to the $4 million and that East Ridge frequently votes on Exit 1 matters. There is nothing illegal about the contributions, either.
But in Seneker’s complaint, which she filed Tuesday with East Ridge City Attorney Mark Litchford, Seneker pointed to a 2006 ethics ordinance that says city officials may not accept any money or gifts that “reasonably may be interpreted as an attempt to influence his decision.” East Ridge adopted that ordinance under then-Mayor Vince Dean in response to state legislation that required municipalities to do so.