Appearance Is Nothing to Shrug At

According to Dan Lett's column in the Winnipeg Free Press yesterday, when a conflict of interest issue arises with respect to Winnipeg's mayor, his first response is to shrug his shoulders. If that works, that's the end of the matter.

These conflict issues include:

In March 2005, the mayor's business partners bought out his interest in a theater. Six months later, the mayor introduced and voted on a motion to give those same business partners $220,000 in city grants. The mayor's argument was that when his partners bought him out, he ceased to have a relationship with them. The shrug and the argument worked.

This summer, he shrugged his shoulders when it was suggested that he not vote on whether to sell city-owned land for a water park that happened to be across from the baseball park the mayor owns. The shrug didn't work, and he withdrew, at least from the vote.

More recently, he shrugged off controversy involving another land deal, but ended up having to allow a review of the deal.

And this week, it came out that he had bought a shell company from the city's administrative officer for $1 in order, he said, to avoid paying legal fees to set up one of his own. It just happened to be lying around the admin's desk, and he just happened to choose the mayor to do a favor for.

The mayor's first response was a shrug and an accusation of a "witch hunt" against him and the administrative officer. The next day he admitted that he should have set up his own shell company, but only acknowledged a perception issue, saying, snidely it appears, that "reality doesn't count."

When it comes to government ethics, it isn't that reality doesn't count. It's that perception is reality. Officials are not supposed to be doing business with other officials because it looks like one official might be using his power to get a good deal from a subordinate, or that an employee might be doing a favor for or making a gift to an official who can affect his career.

The fact is that no one can really know what the deal was between the mayor and the administrative officer. All we can know is that they did a deal. That's the only reality that counts.

All that an ethics code can deal with is transactions and relationships. It can't deal with motives or appearances. But an ethics adviser can speak to appearances and make recommendations about preventing conduct that will undermine the public's trust in those who manage their community. But there has to be an independent ethics officer to ask, and officials have to stop shrugging and start asking for advice.

Of course, if Winnipeg had an ethics commission that could initiate its own investigations, the 2005 matter would have been dealt with, and the mayor would have had a good lesson in government ethics that might have made him more inclined to ask for advice. What has happened recently creates an excellent opportunity for the mayor to set up an independent, comprehensive ethics program in Winnipeg. Or he can simply continue to shrug his shoulders and accuse others.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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