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A former chief of staff fired by Honolulu City Council member Tom Berg is now calling for his impeachment.

And Eric Ryan, notorious for his online attacks on former political allies, is providing evidence of what he says is law-breaking and other unethical behavior.

On a new website — — Ryan is seeking signatures on a petition that would ask the Hawaii Supreme Court to remove Berg from office.

(Read Inside Honolulu for more about the site and the impeachment process: and )

On Monday, Ryan shared the first of what he promised would be a stream of daily updates until Berg is impeached. The first three allegations shared a common theme.

(The Impeach Berg website was having intermittent outages Tuesday, and some of the links were taking a long time to load.)

A voicemail left at Berg’s Council office Tuesday afternoon was not immediately returned. Berg has been grabbing headlines lately, for a confrontation with the Secret Service, which alleged he was drunk at an APEC event, and an unsuccessful request from a colleague to have his voting privileges stripped.

Ryan, who was fired by Berg in July, backs up his allegations largely with internal emails. In one, for example, Berg to wear their “Team Berg” shirts to official events. In another, a her Team Berg shirt “is part of my regular attire nowdays (sic).”

Berg’s expenditure reports indicate that taxpayers paid for some of these items. In (XLS), Berg spent $207.30 of his Council allowance on “Banners and grommets for Town Hall Meeting at Ma’o Organic Farm,” and another $206.70 for T-shirts for that same meeting. In (XLS), he spent another $483.27 on a banner and grommets for a Town Hall meeting.

But that’s hardly proof of law-breaking or even ethical missteps. Council members are permitted to communicate with their constituents and to solicit feedback from them.

The question is whether those shirts and signs could accurately be called campaign-related, or if they’re for the purpose of constituent outreach.

The Honolulu Ethics Commission‘s say elected officials and employees can’t use city time, equipment or city personnel during work hours for campaign activities. The says officials can’t use resources for political activities.

Ethics Commission Executive Director and Legal Counsel Chuck Totto said Tuesday that as long as employees are using vacation time, then it doesn’t count as a use of public resources. He also pointed to , which bars officials from coercing or demanding campaign assistance from employees.

“He cannot instruct them, but they could volunteer,” Totto said. “Those are the types of issues that might be a close call. You’d really have to get into the facts of it.”

There are other close calls raised by Ryan’s allegations. For example, it may be appropriate to have a sign printed up that says “Council member Tom Berg,” but taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill for a sign that says “Re-elect Council member Tom Berg.”

Ryan says signs were doctored with tape that covered the word “for” on signs that originally said “Berg for Council.” The ImpeachBerg website includes old photos of campaign signs that bear the same red-check-mark-through-a-blue-circle-with-white-stars logo as his new signs.

Totto said the Ethics Commission has never in its history dealt with a case that resulted in a specific threshold for what is primarily a campaign activity and what could be considered legitimate constituent outreach.

“Realistically, we have to find that there was a significant political purpose that was being carried out, and if there is a nonpolitical purpose for the expenditure, that would be evidence against there being a violation,” Totto said. Of course, later using a taxpayer-funded sign or shirt for campaign purposes might be problematic, even if it had a nonpolitical purpose originally.

“The devil’s in the details, but this certainly leads to interesting questions,” he said. “I can’t say whether we are or will be investigating, but these are issues that the Ethics Commission is always looking at.”