City will take no further action with Marchione

City Attorney Denis Fitzgibbons has completed his follow-up to an investigation of a complaint of improper workplace behavior filed by City Manager Brenda Fischer against Maricopa City Councilman Marchione.

The city will take no further action, according to information released by the city Thursday.

Marchione said: “I would like to thank all those who participated in the investigation, and hope all will now join me in positively focusing on the business of Maricopa.”

Fischer declined to comment.

The city attorney was asked to investigate a report presented to the city council by independent Phoenix attorney Bill Sims after Fischer and some staff members said it did not reflect their concerns.

“Several individuals felt language used in the report failed to capture the intensity of their interactions with Councilman Marchione,” the city’s press release said.

Mayor Christian Price said late Thursday afternoon the city “wanted to go back and review the complaint initially and be sure we didn’t leave any stone unturned.”

The city will continue to work on developing and implementing suggestions made by Sims, including adopting a censure provision, training staff on the council-manager form of government to better educate them on retaliation, clarifying the personnel manual and adopting a city council code of ethics. 

“That’s what’s within our legal rights and capabilities” to do, Price said, adding staff has started the training.

A censure provision and code of conduct is being studied, but Price said he wants to “look deeper into the ethics aspect of this.”

“I’d like to see a task force on this,” he said, pointing out Phoenix formed an ethics review committee.

Fischer filed a complaint in May alleging inappropriate conduct in two separate incidents by Marchione toward herself as well as seven incidents involving other staff members.

The incidents involving Fischer centered on sexually explicit or vulgar conversation allegedly instigated by Marchione.

Sims reported to the council Aug. 21 that Marchione believed he had a personal friendship with Fischer allowing such conversations and said he admitted that was a mistake.

Fischer, however, said her comments from interviews with Sims were excluded from the report and when she refused to say she and Marchione had a friendship, she was excluded from the investigating process.