Annapolis is an unusual little city in many ways. It may only have 40,000
residents, but it's the state capital, the county seat, the home of
the U.S. Naval Academy, and equidistant, and not far, from Baltimore
and Washington, D.C. With respect to government ethics, the county
for which it is the county seat, Anne Arundel County, has
a relatively good
ethics program , complete with an executive director, which is
very unusual even for a county of half a million people.
Therefore, it's not surprising that Annapolis's ethics commission
and mayor are trying to improve the unusual little city's government
ethics program. The most important improvements in
the
proposed ordinance are (1) giving the EC more teeth (although
they're very blunt teeth) and the right to initiate investigations,
(2) giving the ethics program more transparency, (3) requiring more
financial disclosure, and (4) placing stricter limits on gifts.
These are all important improvements. However, they are the usual
piecemeal improvements. And although the impetus is not the usual
scandal, it is another relatively usual cause: a 2011 state
requirement to have ethics provisions at least equivalent to the
state model. Therefore, according to
an
article on the Eye on Annapolis website , the EC limited its
review of ethics codes to the state model codes and the codes of similarly
sized cities in the state. Sadly, no city in the state has a quality
ethics program.
The result of this ethics reform, if it is accepted by the council,
will be an ethics program that is still not independent of the mayor
(he selects both the EC members and the city attorney, who acts as
its counsel), that has no independent professional to provide timely
ethics advice and ethics training, and that lacks an EC that can
even penalize an official a penny. The language of the ethics code
remains very legalistic and yet, in some places, vague.
However, it's not a bad code, and this is a sincere attempt to
improve it. But it's too bad the city didn't think outside the box a
little and, instead, consider giving the county ethics program
jurisdiction over its officials. Since Annapolis is the county seat,
this could lead other cities and towns in the county to join
together in a professional, consolidated ethics program, which could
itself be improved, so that it would be independent from all local
officials and more transparent than it is now. For more on
countywide programs, see
the
section on regional ethics programs in my free e-book
Local
Government Ethics Programs.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
203-230-2548
