Educators' Obligation to Follow Government Ethics Rules or Argue Against Them

In a recent blog post, I wrote about how the mayor's selection for New York City schools chancellor needed to get a waiver from the state department of education because she lacked an educational background, and that she resigned corporate board positions to make it clear she was serious about taking the job, even though there were, in some cases, no clear conflict.

Unfortunately, the state education commissioner is not such a stickler when it comes to conflicts. According to an article in today's New York Times, he did not look into the possible conflicts of the members of the panel evaluating the chancellor candidate. The department's spokesman said, “He asked each member if they felt they could be independent and offer critical confidential advice as to Ms. Black’s qualifications.”

What is it about conflicts that confuses even educators like the education commissioner and a panel member who was vice chancellor for academic affairs at the City University of New York? The panel member is now head of the city's historical society, to which the mayor gave $475,000, and the chair of an academy for which the mayor raised millions of dollars. Does she have a conflict? “If I had something I thought I should disclose, I would have disclosed it,” she is quoted as saying.

Do these highly intelligent people really not get it that dealing responsibly with a conflict is not an admission that you cannot think independently or that you are somehow a bad person? Do they really not get it that not dealing responsibly with a conflict is at the very least highly unprofessional? Or do they feel they are simply above such petty things, people who know their own integrity so well, they are not required to display it for others?

This issue has actually led to people getting 13,000 New Yorkers to sign a petition opposing a waiver from the state, and some people to protest outside the education commissioner's home. The commissioner's response? Tell the panel members not to talk to the press. Talk about responsibly dealing with conflicts . . .

As usual, Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, says it best:  “There are real questions about whether this is an objective process, or whether it has been compromised by the selection process. Is it legitimate to say, is this tilted, is there a thumb on the scale — not a super heavy one, but a thumb on the scale? Yes."

The thumb is getting heavier every day the education commissioner and the panel members refuse to deal responsibly with the relationships between panel members and the individual who solely selected the person they are evaluating. Educators owe it to the rest of us to set an example when it comes to government ethics. If they refuse to apply the rules to themselves, then they should at least have the intellectual integrity to make cogent arguments against government ethics. Until they do so, they should follow the rules and their spirit.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

---