SHEBOYGAN, Wis. — Charles Adams, the long-serving City Attorney of Sheboygan, announced his retirement, effective Friday.
This was just two days after a troubling criminal conduct report was submitted to the Common Council on March 17.
The report, released recently, spans 127 pages and details allegations of misuse of city data programs and raises significant ethics concerns.
The origins of this investigation date back to June of last year when the Fond du Lac Police Department launched an inquiry into Adams following complaints from several city employees.
They expressed concerns about Adams' conduct involving an email archiving system called Data Cove, which permits users to search key terms throughout city emails and download them.
Adams had complete access to emails from various city departments.
Sheboygan Mayor Ryan Sorenson remarked, "I think the issue was overuse and going out of the scope of what the intended purpose was for this program."
Investigators examined Adams' search history within Data Cove and discovered "concerning searches," according to the report.
While Adams claimed most of his searches related to open records requests, others appeared unrelated.
Notably, his search history included multiple queries for Sheboygan Police Lieutenant Bill Adams, who is also his cousin and was on leave due to an internal investigation at the time.
Watch: Sheboygan City Attorney Charles Adams retires amid conduct investigation
The document noted there were suspicions that Adams was seeking information about the investigation in order to benefit his cousin in the investigation.
Additionally, Adams conducted repeated searches for his son, Micah Adams, who worked in the IT department, and searched for phrases like "any text Adams."
These actions reportedly pulled up sensitive city emails regarding HIPAA, the Housing Authority, Family Medical Leave, and police rosters, among others.
Adams's access to Data Cove was eventually revoked.
The Fond du Lac investigators concluded their report by recommending that Adams face charges of "misconduct in public office."
However, District Attorney Joel Urmanski stated that he "determined there was no criminal law violation," thus closing that aspect of the inquiry.
In light of the situation, the City of Sheboygan is now conducting its own investigation into policy, employee handbook, and ethics violations.
Mayor Sorenson emphasized the importance of learning from this experience, encouraging the community to understand that the misuse of programs is unacceptable.
"I think this is definitely another experience that we want to make sure that we're learning from and growing from," Sorenson stated. "This is a message to the community that misuse of programs is not appropriate and that it doesn't happen again."
The city has indicated that the findings of its internal investigation will be released in the near future.
Stay tuned for updates as this story develops.
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