Local Officials Dealing with the Unethical Conduct of Other Local Officials

A situation in the city of Alameda, CA once again points out that government officials dealing with the possibly unethical conduct of other government officials is not a good thing.

According to an article today in the San Francisco Chronicle, the city of Alameda asked the city's outside counsel to investigate whether a council member had disclosed confidential information to a developer and others against the interests of the city, and had effectively held a council meeting via e-mail in contravention of the state's open meetings law. And yesterday the counsel's report was made public by the city council, and the matter was turned over to the D.A.'s office.

The investigation was requested by the interim city manager and the city attorney. The city manager appears to have also been the principal witness. And according to an article in yesterday's Alameda Sun, the accusations came "three weeks after a public showdown at the June 15 city council meeting between [the council member and the interim city manager. The council member] questioned the interim city manager's contracting practices and called for more council oversight of city consulting contracts. She also questioned [the interim city manager about her] relationship with one of the financial advisers selected to handle some refinancing bonds without opening the job to competitive bidding."

And the council member's re-election campaign had just begun.

According to a very detailed piece in the Island News yesterday, the report accused the council member of leaking confidential information to a local blogger and political activist who sits on the city's Sunshine Task Force, including information for an April 20 closed session item on the process for conducting performance evaluations for the interim city manager, the city attorney, and the city clerk. “There is absolutely nothing that she says that makes this an allowable closed-session item!” the task force member wrote the council member, and the same task force member had written the city a few days earlier, saying that a closed discussion would violate state open-meeting rules.

"At the end of Tuesday’s [council] meeting, Mayor Beverly Johnson called on [the sunshine task force member] to step down from the task force, and she said she’d ask her dais-mates to remove him if he does not do so."

One of the bloggers named in the report for receiving confidential information from the council member wrote yesterday in her blog:

Everything I have received appears to be above board so it will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.    It’s no surprise that the only people listed by name in the [outside counsel's] Press Release as having allegedly received this “evidence of alleged misconduct” are individuals that have dared to be publicly (as opposed to privately) critical of [the interim city manager], including me, [the sunshine task force member], and two key members of the Firefighters Union.

No wonder the council member is able to call the whole thing "a political hatchet job" by the interim city manager and the city attorney (for the same city attorney's position that a sunshine task force does not have to follow the state's open meeting law, see a recent blog post).

And who is to say it's not a political hatchet job? No investigation of an official should be undermined by the involvement of officials who are politically opposed to that official or, especially, have a personal axe to grind. If an official feels another official has violated a law or ethics provision, he or she should go directly to a neutral authority, whether it be a local or state ethics commission, sunshine commission, campaign finance commission, or law enforcement agency.

Officials dealing with the ethics of other officials undermines the public trust in the fair enforcement of laws. Personal interests — even the perception that personal interests are involved — should play no role whatsoever in government ethics. If they do, many will feel there has been an injustice, and they will not trust either the result or the city's ethics program.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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