Selecting Ethics Commission Members in a Poor Ethics Environment

Across the nation, there have been numerous occasions when local government officials oppose disclosure requirements, sometimes even the most minimal ones (for example, the name of an elected official’s employer). Arguments are made about privacy, identity theft, and overweening government. There is talk about rights, but never about obligations.

But the bottom-line argument is that if you require financial disclosure, no one will volunteer for local boards and commissions. This is stated as an immutable fact, although without evidence.

It happens that one of the principal goals of a government ethics program is to increase and maintain the public's trust in their local government so that they will participate more. The result is a more vibrant democracy. And this abstract concept has concrete consequences.

An article in yesterday's Washington (D.C.) Examiner shows how damaging ethical misconduct by local officials can be. It has been a month since the date by which the D.C. mayor was to have nominated members for the city's new ethics commission, and yet no nominations have been made. An aide to the mayor told the Examiner that "few District residents have been willing to serve on the high-profile panel at a time when federal authorities are conducting at least two probes into possible corruption in city government. 'Everybody turns us down,' the official said. 'No one wants to serve. ... It really turns people off toward serving in government.'"

But you can forget the "high-profile panel" part, because the mayor's office isn't just having problems finding citizens to serve on the ethics commission. According to the article, "The role of filling hundreds of seats on the District's boards and commissions has bedeviled Gray throughout his 14-month tenure in the city's top job. An Examiner analysis in March showed 27 city boards had no members at all or were made up entirely of people whose terms had expired. At the time, more than 700 board seats were vacant."

This is exactly the disaster officials say will happen if you require financial disclosure (and yet it doesn't happen). Citizen participation does not decrease when an ethics program improves; it decreases when people don't want to be associated with what appears to be a corrupt government.

And there's another problem. People who only trust insiders, the people they know, are less likely to go beyond the usual suspects to find fresh but unpredictable faces. If you're not willing to beat the bushes for board members, it's a lot harder to find them.

One way to beat the bushes is to approach community organizations and ask each of them to select a member. Not only is this a practical way to approach a difficult job, but it is also the best practice for selection of ethics commission members, because it means that no one under the ethics commission's jurisdiction is involved in the selection of its members. Just because the law does not require this (as it does in places like Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Miami-Dade County) doesn't mean that you can't do it this way.

This is what I recommended to the council back in November. Their way isn't working. It's time to try the best practice.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

203-859-1959