San Diego: An Unappreciative Council and a Close Look at the Revolving Door

Sometimes city councils feel compelled to write or improve their city's ethics law due to a scandal. Sometimes city councils are compelled by a ballot measure. And in both instances, the council isn't happy with the result.

In San Diego, the ethics code came via ballot measure in 2002, and yes, the city council doesn't seem all that happy with the result. So it is doing what it can to undermine the ballot measure and to keep the ethics commission's work out of the public eye.

According to an article in this week's San Diego Union-Tribune, although the ballot measure provided for subpoena powers for the ethics commission, the city council once again has declined to provide this power, despite a 5-0 vote for it at the committee level. Of course, they didn't actually vote against it, but instead sent it to back to committee. At the same time, the council declined to make it illegal to lie to the ethics commission or to provide false documents.

And one councilman took the ethics commission to task for two things:  high fines and press releases. Needless to say, this councilman was fined $17,000 last year (and here's the press release that followed his fine). Of course, the councilman implied some favoritism on the part of the ethics commission by questioning how it decides which cases to write press releases for. The favoritism is pretty straightforward: any case where there is a fine over $100.

The ethics commission chair "said the news releases are viewed as a way to educate the public about ethics laws and demonstrate that there is a price to pay when they are violated. 'I guess they just want us to put it in the City Clerk's Office and hope the press finds it. ... What we've been told over these last three meetings is "make your fines less and shut up about what you do."'"

The San Diego ethics commission certainly doesn't shy away from a fight against elected officials. Just this week, in an excellent letter to a former official accused by the (separately elected) City Attorney of breaking the revolving door provisions of the ethics code, the commission's executive director, Stacey Fulhorst, showed that there was no evidence to support any of the allegations in the City Attorney's criminal complaint. So much for fining officials too much.

This letter is worth reading for its examination of various elements in a determination of whether a former official has used confidential information or what constitutes lobbying. Of special interest is Fulhorst's discussion of the phases of a development project, and how knowledge of an early phase may be of no meaning or value in later stages, when the project has taken a completely different form. Also of interest are her discussions of "substantial involvement," "attempt to influence," and "direct communication."

One problem I had with the letter, which is not about the analysis but the ethics code, is the definition of "city official." This does not include such people as the city's Associate Planners, Project Manager, Senior Planner, and Park Designer. I think this definition, which I've included below, might need broadening if the state financial disclosure requirement doesn't include such employees.