Some Problems Relating to Local Governments Accepting Gifts

Local governments accepting gifts from those who do business with them — contractors, developers, and the like — can cause some serious problems, even when they have to be approved by neutral bodies. This can be seen by what has happened in Middletown, CT, a small city not far from where I live.

According to an article in the Middletown Press, a car dealership that had zoning enforcement issues with the city offered a used car for use by the city's zoning enforcement officer. Such gifts have to be approved by the city council's Finance and Government Operations Committee, but despite the clear conflict, the gift was approved. It's good to require approval by a neutral body, but not if it's given as a matter of course.

In this case, the committee made three conditions on acceptance of the gift:

The title of the car had to be cleared
The enforcement officer's car had to be auctioned off
There could be no quid pro quo

However, none of these conditions had anything to do with a conflict or with the appearance of a conflict. The third condition is disingenuous, because it would be very difficult to prove a quid pro quo.

In Middletown, the next step is for the gift to be approved by the entire council, but a council can't be bothered looking into a gift that's been approved by one of its committees.

As it turns out, two days after the gift was approved by the commission, a Middletown Eye blog report of the gift questioned whether the approval was validly made. Here's the committee discussion of a possible conflict, which was included in the blog post:

"Let's be clear who's donating the car," committee member Gerry Daley said.  "Is he involved in any upcoming enforcement issues?"

"He was involved in a recent issue," Driska said. 

"He wasn't involved," interrupted committee member Phil Pessina said.  "It was the property owner."

"And who's the property owner?" Daley asked.

"Phil Armetta," Pessina answered.  "So it's the dealer donating the car, and not the individual involved in the enforcement issue."

The blog points out that the purpose of the enforcement issue was the filling of wetlands to provide the car dealer with more parking space. So the car dealer clearly benefited from the enforcement decision, and was involved in developing a mitigation plan.

The blog post caught the eye of the city's Director of Planning, Conservation and Development, who went to the mayor and got him involved. The mayor told the newspaper, “It’s just not worth giving rise to an ethical question. Do I think anything unethical was going on? No. But if you think there’s a problem, that’s enough. … We are better off buying a car and not raising ethical questions if we really need one.”

This is the position the committee should have taken. By this point, however, it's clear that the appearance of a conflict is not the issue. There was an actual conflict. A gift was being given to someone who was directly involved in the car dealer's transaction. Was something unethical going on? Definitely. Was there a quid pro quo? Who knows? But that's a criminal issue, not an ethics issue.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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