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Council Fiefdoms and Unethical Behavior
Monday, August 31st, 2009
Robert Wechsler
If you want to encourage unethical behavior, give individual officials
independent power over the sorts of decisions where people have the
greatest incentive to tempt officials, and officials are in the best position to enforce pay-to-play.
I described a good example of this in a recent blog post about a Chicago alderman whose realtor wife did very well with companies given zoning changes by the husband. According to an article in yesterday's Dallas Morning News, the same problem exists in Dallas, and a former mayor, who unsuccessfully tried to change the practice, feels that now is the time to get such an ethics reform passed, due to a recent scandal (one aspect of the charges against a former council member was that he approved zoning to low-income housing developers who gave him kickbacks). In fact, this is the first piece of advice the former mayor is giving to her successor.
According to the article, "single-member districts mean single-handed control. Projects in a district live or die on the word of the council member alone." The new mayor has proposed that every zoning case have the signatures of three council members before it goes to the full council.
The former mayor said, "You can't root out all forms of corruption, but the more people involved in negotiations, the harder it becomes for any one of them to do something unethical."
But council members insist that they know their districts best. Yes, and this makes them effective advocates for or against a zoning change, but the worst people to actually make what appears to be an impartial decision.
I don't think it's certain that getting the approval of other council members will change things much, because they are likely to support each other's recommendations, especially when it has nothing to do with their districts. This is a problem that accompanies district representation, which was actually forced on Dallas, not a choice, according to another Morning News article. District representation is good for minorities and makes individuals accountable to a smaller community, but it does create fiefdoms. And fiefdoms provide great opportunities for unethical and criminal behavior.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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I described a good example of this in a recent blog post about a Chicago alderman whose realtor wife did very well with companies given zoning changes by the husband. According to an article in yesterday's Dallas Morning News, the same problem exists in Dallas, and a former mayor, who unsuccessfully tried to change the practice, feels that now is the time to get such an ethics reform passed, due to a recent scandal (one aspect of the charges against a former council member was that he approved zoning to low-income housing developers who gave him kickbacks). In fact, this is the first piece of advice the former mayor is giving to her successor.
According to the article, "single-member districts mean single-handed control. Projects in a district live or die on the word of the council member alone." The new mayor has proposed that every zoning case have the signatures of three council members before it goes to the full council.
The former mayor said, "You can't root out all forms of corruption, but the more people involved in negotiations, the harder it becomes for any one of them to do something unethical."
But council members insist that they know their districts best. Yes, and this makes them effective advocates for or against a zoning change, but the worst people to actually make what appears to be an impartial decision.
I don't think it's certain that getting the approval of other council members will change things much, because they are likely to support each other's recommendations, especially when it has nothing to do with their districts. This is a problem that accompanies district representation, which was actually forced on Dallas, not a choice, according to another Morning News article. District representation is good for minorities and makes individuals accountable to a smaller community, but it does create fiefdoms. And fiefdoms provide great opportunities for unethical and criminal behavior.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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