Ethics Complaint Made Against School Board Member Allen Dyer

An outspoken member of the Howard County Board of Education, Allen Dyer has often been the plaintiff in legal cases against the school system. In his most recent litigation, he sued over the board's records-retention policy.

But now Dyer is on the other end of a case, defending himself against an ethics complaint. He is accused of violating a policy banning board members from using “the prestige of their offices for their own private gain or that of another.”

The suit says Dyer promised to support measures benefiting the school board’s student representative in exchange for the representative supporting Dyer’s bid to become the school board chairman.

The complaint appears to stem from conversations and correspondence Dyer and others allegedly had with the school board’s student representative, Alexis Adams, in November and December, prior to the board's election of a chair person.

Dyer did not win the seat.

The complaint

A copy of the complaint was sent to Dyer on Dec. 23. It includes a letter handwritten by Adams and two identical typed letters signed by people whose names have been redacted.

The typed letters were filed by Larry Cohen and Patricia S. Gordon, two former board members who left office in 2010, according to an attorney representing the ethics panel.

Adams describes calls from Dyer on Dec. 4 to her home phone and cell phone “in efforts to gain my support once again.”

Later that day, according to the complaint, Adams received a message in support of Dyer from Corey Andrews, a Howard High School student who recently mounted an unsuccessful bid for the student representative position and who has also announced his candidacy for the 2012 Board of Education race.

Like Dyer, Andrews posts on the “Howard Public Education” mailing list and message board whose members discuss issues related to the local school system.

“I did that completely on my own,” Andrews wrote this past weekend on the mailing list, referring to his message to Adams.

After Andrews contacted Adams, so, too, did Sara Calvert, a Centennial High student who is president of the Howard County Association of Student Councils. Calvert said Dyer had called her and asked her to talk to Adams about student representatives’ voting rights, according to the complaint.

The typed letters from Cohen and Gordon put those conversations at the center of the ethics complaint.

“If she voted for him [Dyer], he would support a motion that she made to give the student member full voting rights. He would second the motion,” Cohen and Gordon wrote. “He would also second her motion to give the student member a scholarship to college.”

Student representatives in Howard County have partial voting rights. And, as Dyer had pointed out to Adams, student representatives to some other school boards – such as in Anne Arundel County – receive scholarships.

“Alexis believes that Mr. Dyer’s purpose in calling Sara [Calvert] was to have them speak with the student officers in Howard County to persuade them to support his position,” Cohen and Gordon wrote. “Alexis is very much concerned. She feels that she has been taken advantage of and she is more than willing to testify in front of the ethics panel. Her mother absolutely supports the referral to the ethics board.”

A copy of the complaint accompanies this story.

Breaches of confidentiality

The five-member ethics panel heard Dyer’s case on March 3, according to Dyer.

News of the complaint against Dyer was reported the next day on a local blog called Tales of Two Cities. Dyer posted a copy of that blog post on the Howard Public Education mailing list and, later that night, commented on it.

Though the ethics panel rules say that all involved parties must keep information about cases confidential, Dyer subsequently consulted his attorney as to whether he would now be “legally free from any confidentiality restrictions as the result of the ‘leaks.’ ”

Dyer then posted a copy of the ethics complaint, as well as letters between his attorney, Baltimore-based Harold H. Burns Jr., and an attorney representing the ethics panel, Andrew Nussbaum of Upper Marlboro.

Dyer has also commented on the case, both on the mailing list and in interviews.

“The school system has written rules that say any complaint before the ethics panel is confidential," said Mark Blom, attorney for the Howard County school system. "The school system can neither confirm nor deny any ethics complaint filed against Allen Dyer.”

Blom said Monday that he did not know who initially leaked the news of an ethics complaint to Tales of Two Cities, nor did he know yet what would happen because of that leak.

Meanwhile, school board members are scheduled to meet in a closed session Thursday “to discuss Mr. Dyer's disclosure of confidential information as it relates to the ethics panel,” according to an e-mail sent to board members that Dyer has since posted on the Howard Public Education mailing list.

Dyer’s Defense

“I have never conditioned my public support for better voting rights or a scholarship for the board of education student member on anything, much less a ‘favor,’ ” Dyer wrote on the mailing list on Sunday.

His attorney, Burns, argued Dyer’s case in a pair of letters to Nussbaum, saying Dyer was “simply … engaging in the ordinary acts of the political process. Even if every fact alleged is true, these complaints do not state any claim of a violation of the ethics regulations.”

Burns classified the discussions between Dyer and Adams as “peer-to-peer, with neither holding more or less prestige than the other” and said that the only gain Dyer sought “was his own election as board chair, which can hardly be characterized as gain and is clearly not private.”

Dyer, speaking to Patch on Monday, said the complaint distorts the nature of his contact with Adams.

“Some people would take what was said and try to turn it into a quid pro quo, which is not the situation,” Dyer said. “I was explaining to Alexis that I was a strong supporter of voting rights, in case she didn’t know. She was a new student board member, and I was trying to bring her up to speed.

“This ethics panel should never have gone to a hearing,” he said. “This is pure political speech, me talking to another peer. It’s two board members talking. For the ethics panel to get involved in that is outside their purview. It is politics. It is what the board members are supposed to be doing.”

What’s next

The ethics panel typically takes about two weeks to render a decision, according to Blom, the school system attorney.

Dyer said he believes the panel will decide against him. He points to an opinion the ethics panel issued last year in which it said that board members who want to support political candidates can only do so in their capacity as citizens and not through their role in public office.

“A less than fantastic ethics opinion,” Dyer called it.

Should the panel decide against him in this case, he believes the most severe repercussions will be felt in 2012.

“Just look at the calendar,” he said. “The election is a year and a half away. This is politics.”