Gifts with No Financial Value

It's amazing the lengths people will go to when they are accused of bribery. Take Zehy Jereis, a former Yonkers, NY party chair who gave nearly $175,000 to a Yonkers council member, and is being accused of doing this in order to get her to make a pivotal vote in favor of his client's controversial mall, according to an article in yesterday's New York Times.

He says it had nothing to do with the mall. It was love. Unrequited love. Not only did he give the council member all sorts of gifts, but he lost 150 pounds for her, got his teeth and hair fixed for her, and helped pay her brother's high school tuition.

Of course, if this were an ethics proceeding based on allegations of illegal gifts, love would not be a factor, because motive is not an issue. Paying a brother's tuition would be, however.

But what about losing all that weight? Does a gift count if (1) it was intended as a gift, (2) it was expected to benefit an official, but (3) it has no financial value? We are told by our parents that it's the thought that counts. But is it?

I'm being half-facetious. But let's take a different situation. A fixer such as Jereis wants to do something valuable for a council member, in order to get her to support his clients' projects. What could be better than to use his connections to get her brother into a good private school? Getting him into the school would be intended as a gift, expected to indirectly benefit the official, and yet would have no financial cost or value. While no one would argue that losing weight constitutes a "gift," getting a sibling into a good school is clearly a gift, even if both situations can be described using the same language.

In other words, an official needs to recognize that a gift provision is only a minimum requirement. If it is limited to gifts with a financial value, that does not meant that gifts with no financial value do not create an appearance of impropriety when the giver comes before the official. If someone gets her brother into a school, she needs to tell that someone that she will have to withdraw from any matters involving him or his clients.

It doesn't matter whether he thinks he acted out of love, or even whether she loves him back. He's a player in local land use matters, and therefore a restricted source that cannot make gifts to officials. And the gift is arguably worse than cash or jewelry, because the player put the official in a position where she can no more give back his gift than she could make him add back the 150 pounds. Once it's done – even if the brother chose not to go to that school – it's an unreturnable gift that creates a special relationship, whatever sort of romance they may or may not have had.

Of course, a romance itself would be enough to cause the council member to withdraw from matters involving her beau (again, even though ethics codes usually don't include romantic relationships among those that legally give rise to a conflict). Even a one-sided romance as long-standing and intense as this one appears to have been would be a relationship that would raise an appearance of impropriety.

The moral of the story? If you're involved in seeking benefits from a local government, if you have a hankering for an official involved with handing out those benefits, you have to be ready to lose her support if you get involved with her. You can't chase your love and have her, too.

There's a second moral: criminal proceedings are not a good place to learn how to deal responsibly with conflicts. They are limited to the language of the law, they take into account motives, they require an extremely high standard of proof, and people fight for their lives in them.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

203-859-1959