Horse and Carriage, or Love and Marriage?

Do expertise and conflicts go together more like love and marriage, or like horse and carriage? In other words, are they necessary or are they outdated in this age of government ethics?

Interested people making important decisions that affect their livelihood was the American way for most of our nation's history. Beginning with Watergate, the public has moved past this horse and carriage approach, toward a more selfless public service where people deal responsibly with conflicts and do their best not to put themselves in situations where they have ongoing conflicts. Love and marriage.

Here are two instances that might shed some light on this.

A Harbor Commission
According to a Source Media Group article this week, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the ethics board is considering what to do about a situation where a River Recreation Commission recommends rates for the city’s boat harbor and boat storage area when four of seven commission members lease space there. Since there are only a couple hundred spaces for the whole city, this clearly does not fit the class exception, whereby officials can participate in matters when they are members of a large group, such as seniors or homeowners.

One issue raised is that the commission only recommends rates; it doesn't set the rates. But this is different from, say, a lessors association recommending rates, because the lessors association is clearly an interested party. The commission is treated as an independent body that is supposed to put the public interest ahead of the interest of lessors. An independent body's recommendations will generally be followed by those who have not researched the matter and lack the expertise. Otherwise, why bother?

A member of the river commission noted that the general public can apply to lease a spot in the harbor, and therefore the lessors are simply members of the general public who chose to do so. This is a specious argument, because other members of the public, especially the great majority without boats, have no interest whatsoever.

The chair of the river commission told the ethics board that the commission "had a difficult time keeping members other than those affiliated with the city’s boat harbor." Why would anyone else be interested in devoting their time to the commission? That's a good question. Probably the best answer would be to turn the commission into a lessors association, and have it make recommendations and negotiate with government officials responsible for the harbor.

The ethics board chair, a past member of the city's airport commission, "said it sets fees for a limited number of hangars at the airport. At the same time, it is at least possible that all members of the commission could be pilots." In other words, this problem affects multiple bodies in the city.

The ethics board's conclusion seems very mature. It "decided to see which other city commissions and boards might have similar potential conflicts, and the board also decided to spell out, step-by-step, how a commission recommendation might factor in the final decision to set fees and rates." In other words, it decided to get more information and to deal with the general issue rather than the specific matter.

One solution might be to create an independent body that would oversee the setting of all rates and fees. The body could work with interested parties on the one hand, and government officials on the other, to come up with rates and fees that would take into account various needs and interests, without having any interests of its own. Citizens may not want to serve on very specific boards, but might be happy to be on a more policy- than detail-oriented body such as this.

In other words, love and marriage is about working things out, finding ways to coexist and preserve our values as best we can. We must put behind us the horse and carriage of people setting their own rates and fees, and the rationalizations that try to prevent local government from moving into the modern era. They are history, and should be mocked when they try to stick around in the 21st century.

An Oil and Gas Advisory Board
According an article this week in the Dallas Morning News, there are conflict issues regarding the Flower Mound Oil and Gas Advisory Board. I've written two blog posts (1  2) on advisory boards with members from the drilling industry. The posts include alternatives solutions to this problem.

What interested me in this situation was how far the situation had to go for conflicts to be recognized. In this case, what was required were lawsuits by board members' companies against the city, and some considered even that not to be a sufficient conflict.

The board's chair said that one member whose company was suing the city was "'able to put her industry biases aside' and make outstanding contributions to the board." One council member supported the member, saying that she was not involved with the lawsuit. But another council member said that removing the member was not a reflection on her personally, but "was necessary to preserve the integrity of the board and its mission."

Defending people's integrity is another horse and carriage issue. If your company is involved, you shouldn't be, except as a lobbyist or member of an industry association. That says absolutely nothing about you, except to the extent you are incapable of recognizing how your participation looks to others. That's not an integrity issue, that's a horse and carriage issue, a living in the past when oil and gas companies cared nothing about how things looked, because they brought wealth to the region. They had it wrong back then. The region brings wealth to them.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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