In August, as Charlottesville officials continued to hammer out details of a rezoning that will massively increase housing density across the city, Charlottesville Planning Commissioner Rory Stolzenberg purchased a property under an anonymous LLC.  The $899,000 purchase has been cleared by the city attorney but continues to raise questions about conflicts of interest and the city’s public disclosure requirements for elected officials and appointed board members.

“… perhaps he plans to develop the lot,” city resident John Hossack wrote in a post on the Nextdoor app that garnered more than 200 comments, many of them also expressing alarm. “In this case, he pockets considerable profit having tried to buy the lot, shielded from public view, while the upzoning discussion is ongoing and before a vote to adopt an ordinance that might have an immediate impact on the property value of the lot he just bought.”

The optics of the matter were concerning enough that Planning Commission Chair Hosea Mitchell asked the city attorney’s office to review it, and at the Oct. 10 public meeting, Stolzenberg publicly defended the purchase. He subsequently responded to Charlottesville Right Now’s request for comment with an email he’d sent to another concerned city resident.

“It is true that the house is owned by an LLC, also owned solely by me, in order to prevent online public record aggregators from associating my name and home address in Google searches.”

Stolzenberg wrote that he inquired with the city attorney’s office about disclosing the purchase in September, soon after the sale closed, and was told that city official’s disclosure forms are only updated in January. He cited safety as the reason for the anonymity of the purchase, particularly in the wake of a recent city council meeting that was Zoom-bombed by out-of-town white nationalists spewing hate. 

“Unfortunately, that’s a necessary data hygiene measure for a Jew in 2023 — as we saw in the last Council meeting, bona fide Nazis are still keeping watch on our city,” he wrote.

He also said he has no intention of tearing down the house and redeveloping the property, a claim Hossack also finds troubling since Stolzenberg has been a vocal advocate for “by right” upzoning on nearby streets.

“His lot is two acres and is supposedly for his primary (sole) residence. Could you think of a more glaring example of hypocrisy?” Hossack wrote, also citing concerns that Stolzenberg used attorney Nicole Scro, who works closely with developers and frequently has projects that come before the Charlottesville planning commission. 

Stolzenberg did not address Charlottesville Right Now’s question about his choice of attorney, but the email he provided suggests he sees the criticism of his purchase as a personal attack.

“Frankly, it has been remarkable to see the same exact people who for years derided me as a mere renter, with no financial stake in the city, to now turn around and call foul on me owning a home. I am beginning to think it may be something about me that they don’t like,” he wrote.

Another Charlottesville resident believes the controversy around Stolzenberg’s property purchase simply highlights the broader issue of government ethics and questions the city’s once-per-year disclosure requirement.

“That’s a problem in my view,” said Ben Heller in an interview on Charlottesville Right Now about the elements of Stolzenberg’s purchase. “It’s not one that any planning commissioner created, but it leads to a situation where you can have some bad optics because of timing.”

Heller, who works in international finance, frequently interacts with government entities in this country and abroad and is affiliated with the local group Citizens for Responsible Planning, which has been critical of the rezoning. He believes the city should have a more specific code of ethics than the general guidelines dictated by state law.

“The purpose of having a code of ethics or conflict of interest rules is not just to prevent self-dealing, but it’s also to try to ground confidence and confidence in the process on the part of residents,” he said. 

He’s not surprised that Stolzenberg’s purchase amid the rezoning process stirred up fears. 

“We have a very controversial process… with a lot of conspiratorialism on both sides. And this only adds fuel to the fire,” he said.

Heller believes elected and appointed officials like Stolzenberg are not well served by the city’s current requirements and notes that other Virginia localities have expanded on the state’s disclosure requirements.

“It’s really important in a small town, right? Because everybody knows everybody. There’s always some degree of conflict. I think in some ways we’re too small to be entirely squeaky clean. And the way that you cope with that is by being really fulsome in disclosure,” he said.

This is not the first time the need for a more specific code of ethics for boards and other city entities has arisen, City Councilor Michael Payne told Charlottesville Right Now, citing a 2021 incident involving the leak of text messages between members of the Police Civilian Oversight Board and a second incident involving a city employee.

“It’s something over the past couple of years we’ve realized that we needed to really formalize and have be clear because we had situations where there was behavior that I don’t think was conducive to supporting the mission of certain boards and commissions, but there wasn’t a clear basis in writing for saying, you shouldn’t have done that, or this was the expectation you were appointed to the board of commission,” he said. “So I think clarifying both those things is always important. There’s state law, and of course you always have to follow that. But then there are things that go beyond that… that relate to trust and faith in local government.”

Following the PCOB leaked text controversy, City Council revised the code of ethics for that board. In April, council received a presentation on a study conducted by UVA School of Law’s State and Local Government Policy Clinic.

The 33-page report noted that Charlottesville has no formal training process for boards and lacks transparent record-keeping systems. It recommended that the city implement in-person, standardized training for every new board member, develop training resources for all members that go beyond FOIA requirements, give council uniform removal authority, and institute a code of ethics detailing criteria for removal.

A new code of ethics has not been applied broadly to boards and commissions, Payne confirmed.

Heller says the city needs to implement precise and prescriptive standards of disclosure.  

“In my line of work, the way a firm protects itself against accusation of insider trading or market abuse is clear procedural mandates,” he wrote in an email, suggesting planning commission members should be required to disclose potential conflicts of interest more than once a year. 

“Every commissioner should report any change in beneficial interest in property within the city within 10 days of agreement on the transaction (i.e. don’t wait for closing). In addition, they should report any financial or professional dealings with anyone who has business pending before the Commission or has had business before the Commission in the prior 12 months,” he wrote. 

The immediate disclosure of potential conflicts should be required, he said, even if the potential conflict is ultimately found to be permissible.  

“We can then work on trying to define the point at which potential conflicts become actual conflicts,” he wrote. “Having visibility into all the potential conflicts that affect Commissioners would help the city understand where it is practical to draw the line.”

 

10/23/23: This story has been clarified to note the number of responses on Hossack’s Nextdoor post and the nature of the threats to which Stolzenberg was referring.