Stamford Official's Attempt to Prevent Government Employees from Filing Ethics Complaints Is Nipped in the Bud

There's a new twist to the ethics mess in Stamford, which I described in a blog post last week. It turns out that, according to an article in the Stamford Advocate, a board of finance member, against whom an ethics complaint had been brought, charged that the city employee who filed the complaint "violated the code because in filing a complaint he sought to preserve his employment with the city and therefore influence [the respondent] 'for his own financial gain.'"

According to this argument, a government employee who files an ethics complaint has a conflict of interest, because he is presumably doing it to preserve his pay check. If this were held to be the case, government employees could not file ethics complaints unless they first resigned, there would be no whistleblower protection, and intimidation would rule.

Fortunately, the Stamford ethics board dismissed the board of finance member's complaint.

The board of finance member insists that the ethics board's dismissal was the result of partisan bias, since its members were appointed by the former Democratic mayor (itself a partisan dig, since the former mayor is now running for governor). As self-serving as such an argument may be, preventing elected officials from making the argument is a good argument for having elected officials stay out of the ethics commission selection process.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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