CHARLESTON - Former Pratt mayor Ann Neese must repay town officials $7,000 and pay a $500 fine for violating state ethics rules, the state Ethics Commission ruled this week.
Neese resigned as mayor in August. In June, she resigned as Pratt's interim police chief, a job she had been holding since 2006.
Ethics officials said Neese appointed herself interim police chief in April 2006, after the town's former police chief resigned suddenly. That summer, officials for the state Ethics Commission told Neese she could not be both mayor and police chief at the same time, but Neese replied she was only acting as police chief until she could hire someone else to fill the job.
Neese made $400 a month as mayor, but reported working more than 3,000 hours of overtime as police chief between 2006 and her resignation in June. Ethics officials said Neese made $34,118 as police chief in 2006, $29,200 as police chief in 2007 and $16,128 in the first half of 2008.
"From summer 2006 through January 2008, the Ethics Commission's staff clearly and repeatedly advised [Neese] that she could not serve both as mayor and police chief without violating the Ethics Act," ethics officials wrote.
Members of the ethics commission voted on Feb. 7 to initiate an ethics complaint against the former mayor. Neese resigned as police chief in June, saying her resignation had nothing to do with ethics proceedings. She resigned as mayor in August.
Ethics officials ruled Thursday that Neese would have to pay back the town $7,000 for unauthorized overtime and pay the ethics commission a $500 fine.
She was also prohibited from holding public office or working for any municipality for 10 years.
Neese declined comment on Friday, referring to a four-page response she filed with the ethics commission.
In her response, Neese said she thought she was acting legally while serving as interim police chief. Neese said she was trying to honor a promise to the citizens of Pratt to provide 24-hour-a-day police protection.
She also said she was deeply affected by the deaths of her mother and aunt within a month of one another in 2007.
"After the death of my mom, I went through the motions of working, but I had no concept of time or date," Neese wrote. "It took all I had to get through the day and night. I remembered that my job was to protect and serve the citizens of Pratt, and on that I did not waver....
"I thought I was doing what was best for Pratt.... To have acted with love for Pratt and those wonderful people who supported me leaves me with sadness that I did not get to complete the job to which I was elected."
This story originally appeared in the Nov. 14 edition of The Charleston Gazette, and is reprinted with permisison.
