Was There In Fact an Ethics Emergency in Corpus Christi?

In May I wrote a blog post about a so-called ethics emergency in Corpus Christi, declared by a lame-duck council at its last meeting. This so-called emergency was the excuse for pushing through ethics reforms without running them by the city's ethics commission or allowing public discussion. The new council quickly suspended the reforms, pending review by the ethics commission.

At least that was the excuse the new council used. According to an article in the Caller-Times this week, the council did not accept much of what the ethics commission recommended (click, wait a while for the PDF file to load, and go to page 332ff), including the principal reform passed by the lame-duck council, which was to prevent the families and business partners of council members and senior officials from entering into contracts with the city.

Another EC recommendation was rejected by the council:  to require council members to make a public statement before voting on a contract to anyone who contributed $1,000 or more to their campaigns in the previous two years. Council members complained that "complying with the rule would make meetings long and they would be likely to forget who had given them $1,000." That's a classic one-two. One, the council members are admitting that they receive so many large contributions from contractors that disclosing them would take a significant amount of time. And two, they are incapable of bringing a list of their large contributors, and the businesses they own or manage, to council meetings. The mayor suggested that the city do this work for council members, since it would be so difficult, but the council still unanimously opposed the idea.

The EC clearly identified a serious problem in Corpus Christi. Placing a limit on contributions from city contractors would appear to be the best solution, but that would likely be even less popular with the council than disclosure.

At first, the council passed a version of the ethics ordinance that removed the restriction on council members themselves entering into contracts with the city, a provision that had been there all along. But hours later they changed their minds. This would, it appears, have proved that the lame-duck council had been right about there being an ethics emergency in Corpus Christi.

The council did, according to the article, add a gift provision, the one every council adds when they don't want to really do anything:  the provision "prevents council members from accepting gifts meant to influence them. It’s up to council members to determine if a gift was given to buy influence."

A gift meant to influence is a bribe, a crime that is dealt with by prosecutors, not by ethics commissions. Such a provision does nothing but confirm that gifts to officials are acceptable if they can't be proven to be bribes.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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