Bangor’s City Council is planning to add punishments to its ethics code following a flurry of ethics investigations into councilors’ conduct.
Proposed changes would give councilors a blueprint for responding to findings from the Board of Ethics, which does not have any enforcement power on its own. That process can drag on for months and does not require the council to vote on penalties for councilors found to have violated the code.
Recent investigations that identified unethical conduct by Councilor Wayne Mallar have highlighted these gaps in the code, with the council repeatedly postponing a decision on findings about Mallar’s behavior at a city commission meeting in August.
Bangor’s five-member ethics board is tasked with investigating potential violations, determining the facts of a case and issuing an opinion to the council about whether a city councilor, appointee or staffer acted unethically.
A proposed ordinance drafted by Councilor Susan Faloon and revised with help from the city’s legal team would mandate that the council vote on whether to accept the board’s opinion, and if wrongdoing was found, vote also on a penalty.
If the council agrees that an official violated the code, it would have to vote for one of six options: not issuing a penalty, which would require a written statement explaining to the public why they are declining punishment; censure, which is a formal statement of disapproval; stripping the councilor of committee and liaison assignments; a civil fine; assigning the guilty party to complete a training; or “any other lawful action the council deems appropriate and proportionate to the nature of the violation.”
Faloon said at a government operations committee meeting Monday that she’d been working on the draft for a few months after fielding questions from residents who were confused about the next steps after an ethics decision.
The ordinance would give councilors the ability to override an ethics board decision by voting that they do not believe a violation was committed.
The new rules would also add a 120-day deadline for the board to investigate an allegation, with the option to extend with council approval. The council would then have to address issues within 30 days of receiving a decision from the board.
Those parts of the proposal were motivated by the slow pace of the ethics process, Faloon said. “The idea was to kind of tighten up that timeline because after so much time goes on, people just assume that we’re not doing anything with it.”
The current version of the city’s ethics code states, “Violations of this code shall be punishable by civil fine,” pointing to the city’s code that lays out a minimum penalty of $100. “In addition to any other penalties or remedies as may be provided by law, violation of this code shall constitute cause for censure, after notice and hearing conducted by the City Council,” it reads. But the code does not elaborate on the process or timeline for determining a punishment.
Mallar is the only councilor the board has found in violation of the ethics code in recent years. The board determined in March that he inappropriately used his position as a city councilor to attempt to influence a decision by the Historic Preservation Commission. Nearly three months after the board issued its official opinion, the council still hasn’t taken action on it.
If the new rules are passed, Mallar may also face punishment for comments he made in March — at his own hearing for the other ethics matter — regarding Bangor’s school budget, saying he wouldn’t support a budget increase because of multilingual programs for students he called “illegals.”
The board determined last week that Mallar’s remarks, which were caught on a hot mic, broke the city’s ethics rules.
Ethics board members have considered two other cases in the last year regarding whether councilors can take out election nomination papers on someone else’s behalf and text each other about city business, but the board didn’t find violations in either case.
Before October 2025, the board had not met for two and a half years.
The proposed changes to the code could be implemented in the next month, and several councilors expressed support for them at the committee meeting Monday.
“At least now we have something we can go by, and I think it’s a much more precise way to look after whatever decision comes our way,” Councilor Susan Deane said.
No one at the meeting seemed opposed. Mallar was the only committee member who did not contribute to the discussion of the proposal.
Committee members decided Monday to put a first reading of the ordinance on next week’s council agenda, meaning the final approval vote would likely fall on July 27.
