When Transparency Gets Sneaky

When a major newspaper's editorial on a city council's handling of an important ethics issue begins with "Sneaky. Real sneaky." it's something worth sharing with those interested in local government ethics.

The newspaper is the Jacksonville Times-Union, and the editorial on a new bill to take the city's ethics commission and ethics officer (City Ethics' own Carla Miller) out of the open meetings equation in Jacksonville appears in today's issue.

The editors are scathing about the council's attempt to undermine a sunshine law written three years ago to deal with council open meetings problems. "The legislation's message is clear: We want less training. We want to handle our own compliance without any checks from people we don't control."

The ethics commission and ethics officer were neither consulted nor even told about the new bill, even though members of the general counsel's office (who wrote the bill) attended council committee meetings set up expressly to deal with ethics reforms. In other words, there was no transparency in the handling of a transparency bill. That says it all.

The editorial is especially critical of the general counsel's office:

[T]he General Counsel's Office is no watchdog for the public. In practice, it has been a guard dog for protecting its clients - the City Council in this case. As a grand jury report noted two years ago: "General Counsel Rick Mullaney ... appears to view the General Counsel's office strictly as a legal representative of the city and its officials rather than as an institution that has a larger responsibility to the residents of Jacksonville."

As I've written many times before, this is probably the single most important problem in local government ethics:  local government attorneys who believe they should represent the interests of individuals rather than the public interest. Yes, they report to individuals, but law in the ethics and transparency fields is all about the public's interest in having their officials acting in the public interest rather than in their own personal interests. The public interest is in independent ethics advice and enforcement. A general counsel's office that writes legislation to give the council (and itself) control of transparency advice and enforcement is acting in the personal interest of its perceived clients (and itself), not in the public interest.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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