Our campaign hit a bump in the road when the three-person Yonkers Board of Ethics ruled Tasha Diaz did nothing wrong when she accepted a $1,000 campaign contribution and then shortly thereafter introduced the now infamous ordinance that radically increased the city's noise limits. You can read the transcript of Diaz's testimony before the board HERE.

The board based its ruling on a narrow interpretation of the Yonkers ethics codes. The code allows public officials to receive a "financial benefit or gift" when the money is given as a campaign contribution.

The Board was responding to a complaint referred to it by the Westchester DA's office. The complaint was lodged by Peter Cohn, founder of Quieter Yonkers. The complaint alleges that Diaz introduced her 2023 revision of the noise ordinance to favor the contributor of a $1000 campaign contribution. The ethics board found that Diaz did not violate the city's ethics code, specifically the prohibition on improper "financial benefits and gifts." That section of the code allows for campaign contributions.

Given the track record of the board of ethics, this decision comes as no surprise. And while the ruling itself may have cleared Diaz, the official transcript of Diaz's testimony makes it very clear that Diaz has absolutely no explanation for why she proposed an increase in the residential noise level. Her testimony about apartment residents turning up their TVs to drown out construction noise, worries about noise made by nighttime adult swimmers near her building, and her own mother's reckless lodging of 40 noise complaints with the police contains absolutely no reasoning pertinent to the ordinance she sponsored.