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No Conflict Without Profit? - Exasperating Quote of the Day

Friday, March 30th, 2007
Robert Wechsler

A former chancellor of Maricopa Community College in Phoenix, Arizona continued to work for the college on contract, while also having a business on the side that did business with the college on a no-bid basis. The business was set up by the college when he was chancellor and was given to him a few months after he retired.

The former chancellor denies any conflict of interest because his business (Sedona Conferences and Conversations, which does business with colleges around the world) is not always profitable. 'If I were really crazy about making money, I wouldn't be doing Sedona. It doesn't cover costs most of the time.'

Story Topics: 
Model Code, In the news

Comments

donmc says:

Fri, 2007-03-30 09:50

Yes Rob, that opens up a way out of any dangerous exposure in terms of conflicts of interest - if it seems to be likely that public exposure of a conflict will arise, just run the resulting "fruits" of that conflict down to a loss - and then you just point at the lack of profits and say "See - there's no conflict here - it didn't make any money for me..."
So just to paraphrase for him, what he (the former chancellor) is really admitting to is incompetence...