Bangor’s Board of Ethics determined Tuesday that City Councilor Wayne Mallar violated the city’s ethics code during an August meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission.
The decision marks the end of an unusually active stretch for the city’s ethics board, which has been sent three cases in the last seven months. Before October 2025, the board had not met for two and a half years.
Of the three recent inquiries, this is the first where the board has found evidence of wrongdoing by a city councilor.
The inquiry stemmed from allegations that Mallar inappropriately used his position as a city councilor to attempt to influence a decision by the commission on a resident’s replacement of their historic home’s slate roof in an Aug. 14 commission meeting.
The ethics inquiry was brought forward by former Councilor Dan Tremble in September and was initially set to be decided in December but has been postponed several times.
Ethics board members were tasked with determining whether Mallar violated the city’s ethics code during that meeting by speaking with members of the preservation commission during a break.
The board ultimately decided that Mallar violated portions of the city’s ethics code stating that city officials can only use their titles when the council has authorized them to do so and they’re conveying the official position of the city, or when they make it “clear and unambiguous” that they’re speaking as an individual and not as a representative of the city.
It also voted that Mallar violated the section of the code mandating that city councilors “maintain a standard of conduct that will inspire public confidence in the integrity of the city’s government.”
Mallar declined to comment on the board’s decision.
At the August meeting, Historic Preservation Commission members were considering a request brought forward by Bangor resident Steven Farren to retroactively approve his replacement of his home’s slate roof with asphalt shingles. Farren went in front of the commission multiple times as part of a lengthy dispute over the roof with city officials.
During the meeting, Rick Violette, a local property owner and contractor who was presenting in support of Farren, requested a recess so he and Farren could have a private discussion outside the room with Anne Krieg, Bangor’s business and economic development director, according to meeting minutes.
After the 15-minute break, Violette requested that further discussion be postponed, in part because of “inappropriate attempts to influence” by a city councilor, the minutes state.
Video of the meeting streamed by the city does not show what happened in the council chambers because it stopped recording during the break. But Edythe Dyer, Farren’s wife, has said that Mallar approached commission members during that time and tried to convince them to reconsider hearing her husband’s case. She raised these concerns at an Aug. 25 City Council meeting, prompting the ethics investigation.
“He made it very clear he was there on behalf of the City Council and was there as a representative of the City,” Dyer said at the time.
Historic Preservation Commission members are appointed by the City Council, per the city’s charter.
Dyer told the ethics board Tuesday that she stayed in the room during the break and saw Mallar approach commission members and tell them the city council disagreed with the case. She added that she saw Mallar had a stack of papers with city of Bangor letterhead that she believed he intended to distribute to commission members.
“Councilor Wayne Mallar has taken an unusual, almost fanatic interest in our roof,” Dyer said.
Mallar told the board Tuesday that he spoke to a commission member, Anne Marie Quin, during the recess because she is a friend of his, but that he didn’t tell her he’d been sent by the council or bring paperwork to hand out to commission members.
Shane Leonard, the ethics board’s chair, asked Mallar if he told commission members the case was “procedurally incorrect and shouldn’t be heard in that venue,” as Dyer claimed.
“Not that I remember. I may have, but I don’t remember it,” Mallar replied. He also said he asked the commission’s chair when he would have an opportunity to ask a procedural question
Sonia Mallar, Wayne Mallar’s wife, also addressed the board Tuesday, saying, “Mr. Mallar and I came here to the meeting as ordinary citizens.”
The ethics board deliberated at length about whether it was ambiguous if Mallar was speaking to the commission members as a private citizen or as a councilor, and if he may have been speaking to them about city business.
Leonard noted that while the board doesn’t know exactly what Mallar said to any commission members because there is no recording, “people that were there said that they overheard certain things, and it doesn’t sound like it was nothing. It sounds like it was city business.”
He also suggested that in the future, the city should keep the recording going during a meeting recess.
This was the board’s first decision since December.
City councilors recently rejected a proposed investigation — which unlike the other three inquiries launched in the last year, was initiated by a Board of Ethics member as opposed to a councilor — into comments made by Council Chair Susan Hawes.
Marc Eastman, a recently-appointed board member, submitted the referral after Hawes said during the Feb. 2 government operations committee meeting that as council chair, she had the power to disband the city’s Advisory Committee on Racial Equity, Inclusion, and Human Rights without a council vote. The city’s code does not state that the council chair has this ability.
Hawes clarified in last week’s council meeting that she misspoke when claiming she could disband the committee. “We didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to repeal it,” she said in the meeting.
The council voted unanimously against moving forward with the inquiry, with Hawes’s colleagues saying her false statement was an honest mistake.
