The mayor of Gilbert, target of an unsuccessful recall effort, says he knew his critics didn't have enough signatures to put his ouster on the ballot but he didn't tell a city official about it.
The town clerk rejected recall petitions last week against Mayor Steve Berman bearing 1,208 signatures.
Organizers of the effort had been told they needed 981 signatures to force Berman into a recall election. But after the petitions had been filed, Town Clerk Cathy Templeton said she erred in her calculations, and that the recall organizers needed 1,963 signatures.
Berman said it would have been inappropriate for him to correct Templeton because state law requires municipal clerks to be independent of city or town councils on election matters, even though in Gilbert the clerk reports directly to the council.
"I can't go in there and tell her how many signatures are needed to recall me," Berman said.
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Chris Baker, a political consultant hired by Berman, was the one who first questioned Templeton as to the number of petition signatures required to force Berman into a recall election. Baker raised that issue Friday, the day after the deadline for filing the petitions.
Recall organizer Fred Phillis said many people have raised questions about Berman's culpability.
"It starts to raise questions about the conduct of the mayor, in terms of malfeasance or misfeasance, and whether he could be removed because of it," Phillis said. "I don't know. I'm just raising the question because other people have."
Templeton, the town clerk since November 1997, took responsibility for the miscalculation in a letter to Phillis explaining why the petitions were rejected.
Phillis said he believes Templeton made an honest mistake, but under town law the revised figure should actually be 840 signatures, a little lower than the figure she initially quoted.
