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A Miscellany
Monday, July 13th, 2009
Robert Wechsler
Ethics Reform and Ethics
Environments
This weekend, the Press-Enterprise ran an excellent editorial about ethics reform in San Bernardino County. Not only do the editors recognize that watered-down, "symbolic" ethics reform is worthless, but they also recognize that even valuable ethics reform, such as a proposed sunshine ordinance that goes beyond state requirements, is "not be enough to fix the county's shameful political culture. Ethics commissions focus on objective rules about campaign donations, gifts, lobbying and similar concerns. Those types of violations pale compared to the scandals that repeatedly have rocked San Bernardino County."
What needs to happen is change in the county's ethics environment: "San Bernardino County needs to abandon a political tradition that puts self-interest ahead of the public good, favors well-connected insiders over taxpayers and uses government as a personal gravy train. ... The county will continue to see recurrent government scandals as long as the political community keeps enabling corruption." For more background, see my earlier blog post on ethics reform in San Bernardino County.
Ethics Reform and Marion Barry
Former Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry (now a council member) is known for his scandals more than his leadership in the District. Inadvertently, it looks as if yet another scandal will lead to some serious ethics reform in the nation's capital. According to an article this weekend in the Washington Post, high-powered Washington lawyer Robert S. Bennett has been appointed a special investigator to look at a contract given to Barry's girlfriend. Although only amounting to $5,000 a month, this contract scandal has led the council to ask Bennett to "examine whether the council needs to implement new ethics policies or change its contracting procedures."
Right now, the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics is focused on "elections, ballot access, and voter registration." Hopefully, soon it will start enforcing ethics policies, as well.
Ethics Commission Members with Political Conflicts
How close a political relationship with the subject of an ethics complaint should be considered sufficient to require an ethics commission member to recuse himself? This issue was raised last month by a talk-show host in Colorado Springs, as well as by a local good government group and at least one of the local newspapers. An ethics commission member was on the 2006 congressional steering committee of the mayor of Colorado Springs, who has had a complaint filed against him.
How divorced from politics should ethics commission members be? It would be nice if they did not get involved in politics at all, beyond voting. Most people aren't involved in politics, so it's not hard as many think to put together an ethics commission consisting of just such people.
But if one feels this is too limiting, what would constitute a conflict? Is it enough to be on a party committee with an official? To work in the official's campaign, even in a minor role? To be on the official's campaign or steering committee? To hold a fundraiser for an official? To be a party committee or campaign committee chair, treasurer, or other sort of leader? To have been appointed to a position by the official?
Merely supporting an official running for office is not enough. But is giving a speech in support of the official? Giving more than a minor contribution?
There are no certain answers to these questions. I think it's better that these questions not come up, that politically-involved people not be chosen to serve on ethics commissions. But if they do accept such a position, they should be prepared to recuse themselves whenever there is an appearance of impropriety. For ethics commissions, education is a more important goal than enforcement. There is no way an ethics commission is going to teach officials to consider how their conduct looks to the public if ethics commission members themselves aren't willing to do this, and do it emphatically, even where it is clearly not required by law. The goal of education, if nothing else, should guide politically-involved ethics commission members to treat gray situations as if they were black-and-white.
After insisting that she had no conflict (even accusing one newspaper of having its own biases and conflicts), all this attention caused the ethics commission member to recuse herself, according to an article in the Colorado Statesman. The result is right, but her message is not -- the message she has given is that you can always recuse yourself if you get enough bad publicity. If you're lucky, you won't have to. The reason she had to was overactive news media. This is not the message ethics commission members should be sending.
Competition and Conflict
According to an article in El Paso's Newspaper Tree, some people are asking whether a council member has a conflict with respect to approval of outdoor advertising rules because he owns an online advertising firm. It's true that there is some level of competition between online and outdoor advertising, but (i) there is no direct financial benefit from voting one way or another on outdoor advertising rules in El Paso, (ii) little or none of the competition is local in character, and (iii) there is no direct competition for customers. In fact, outdoor and online advertising firms probably share clients.
An online advertising executive may very well be more rather than less sympathetic to the requests of an outdoor advertising firm, because advertising is important to him. It's his industry, after all. So rather than worrying about competition with a different part of the industry, maybe those concerned with a conflict here should be worrying about them being in the same industry. But either way, it's not clear that there is a conflict that would make the council member's participation appear biased one way or the other.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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This weekend, the Press-Enterprise ran an excellent editorial about ethics reform in San Bernardino County. Not only do the editors recognize that watered-down, "symbolic" ethics reform is worthless, but they also recognize that even valuable ethics reform, such as a proposed sunshine ordinance that goes beyond state requirements, is "not be enough to fix the county's shameful political culture. Ethics commissions focus on objective rules about campaign donations, gifts, lobbying and similar concerns. Those types of violations pale compared to the scandals that repeatedly have rocked San Bernardino County."
What needs to happen is change in the county's ethics environment: "San Bernardino County needs to abandon a political tradition that puts self-interest ahead of the public good, favors well-connected insiders over taxpayers and uses government as a personal gravy train. ... The county will continue to see recurrent government scandals as long as the political community keeps enabling corruption." For more background, see my earlier blog post on ethics reform in San Bernardino County.
Ethics Reform and Marion Barry
Former Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry (now a council member) is known for his scandals more than his leadership in the District. Inadvertently, it looks as if yet another scandal will lead to some serious ethics reform in the nation's capital. According to an article this weekend in the Washington Post, high-powered Washington lawyer Robert S. Bennett has been appointed a special investigator to look at a contract given to Barry's girlfriend. Although only amounting to $5,000 a month, this contract scandal has led the council to ask Bennett to "examine whether the council needs to implement new ethics policies or change its contracting procedures."
Right now, the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics is focused on "elections, ballot access, and voter registration." Hopefully, soon it will start enforcing ethics policies, as well.
Ethics Commission Members with Political Conflicts
How close a political relationship with the subject of an ethics complaint should be considered sufficient to require an ethics commission member to recuse himself? This issue was raised last month by a talk-show host in Colorado Springs, as well as by a local good government group and at least one of the local newspapers. An ethics commission member was on the 2006 congressional steering committee of the mayor of Colorado Springs, who has had a complaint filed against him.
How divorced from politics should ethics commission members be? It would be nice if they did not get involved in politics at all, beyond voting. Most people aren't involved in politics, so it's not hard as many think to put together an ethics commission consisting of just such people.
But if one feels this is too limiting, what would constitute a conflict? Is it enough to be on a party committee with an official? To work in the official's campaign, even in a minor role? To be on the official's campaign or steering committee? To hold a fundraiser for an official? To be a party committee or campaign committee chair, treasurer, or other sort of leader? To have been appointed to a position by the official?
Merely supporting an official running for office is not enough. But is giving a speech in support of the official? Giving more than a minor contribution?
There are no certain answers to these questions. I think it's better that these questions not come up, that politically-involved people not be chosen to serve on ethics commissions. But if they do accept such a position, they should be prepared to recuse themselves whenever there is an appearance of impropriety. For ethics commissions, education is a more important goal than enforcement. There is no way an ethics commission is going to teach officials to consider how their conduct looks to the public if ethics commission members themselves aren't willing to do this, and do it emphatically, even where it is clearly not required by law. The goal of education, if nothing else, should guide politically-involved ethics commission members to treat gray situations as if they were black-and-white.
After insisting that she had no conflict (even accusing one newspaper of having its own biases and conflicts), all this attention caused the ethics commission member to recuse herself, according to an article in the Colorado Statesman. The result is right, but her message is not -- the message she has given is that you can always recuse yourself if you get enough bad publicity. If you're lucky, you won't have to. The reason she had to was overactive news media. This is not the message ethics commission members should be sending.
Competition and Conflict
According to an article in El Paso's Newspaper Tree, some people are asking whether a council member has a conflict with respect to approval of outdoor advertising rules because he owns an online advertising firm. It's true that there is some level of competition between online and outdoor advertising, but (i) there is no direct financial benefit from voting one way or another on outdoor advertising rules in El Paso, (ii) little or none of the competition is local in character, and (iii) there is no direct competition for customers. In fact, outdoor and online advertising firms probably share clients.
An online advertising executive may very well be more rather than less sympathetic to the requests of an outdoor advertising firm, because advertising is important to him. It's his industry, after all. So rather than worrying about competition with a different part of the industry, maybe those concerned with a conflict here should be worrying about them being in the same industry. But either way, it's not clear that there is a conflict that would make the council member's participation appear biased one way or the other.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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