Mayoral and Council Interference with EC Member and Staff Selection

The independence of ethics commissions and their staff is the single most important aspect of a government ethics program.
Who selects the commission members and their staff, and how, colors everything about an ethics program and determines, more than any other factor, whether the public has confidence in the commission's advice and enforcement of an ethics code. So the news from Washington, DC and Atlanta is not good.

Last year, the District of Columbia passed a new ethics ordinance that had many good things about it, but did not provide for an independent ethics commission. According to an article yesterday in the Washington Examiner, the mayor missed the deadline for appointments of members to the new Board of Ethics and Government Accountability. In fact, he didn't started asking for residents to apply for the board until last week. Not only will this first ethics board enforce the city's ethics laws, but it also be responsible for writing a lot of rules and regulations itself. And it has been given a short time to do this. The selection process should have begun immediately after the new ethics ordinance had been passed.

The article raises an issue that I haven't considered with respect to mayoral or council appointment of ethics commission members:

Since taking office in 2011, Gray hasn't filled more than 700 seats on the city's 175 boards and commissions. A recent Examiner analysis found that 27 of those panels have no members at all or are exclusively made up of people whose terms have expired.

If elected officials are not responsible enough to fill places on boards, then this responsibility should be taken out of their hands, at least when the board has oversight over them. Yes, I realize that it is difficult to fill so many positions. Citizens aren't begging to be nominated. This is why it is best to bring community organizations into the picture, as is the case in Atlanta and many other cities and counties, because these organizations have far less problem finding citizens willing to serve.

A Council Attempt to Short-Circuit the Independent Ethics Officer Selection Process
Atlanta's truly independent ethics board might not be so independent if certain council members have their way. In mid-January, the board selected a former executive secretary of the Georgia Campaign Finance Commission to be the city's ethics officer (it was a 7-0 vote), according to an article yesterday on the Atlanta Unfiltered website. The council's only role is to confirm the board’s selection, and a month later it hasn't done so.

In fact, one council member is proposing an alternative selection process, after the selection process has been all but completed! His proposal is that the ethics board would give the council the names of three finalists for the position and all supporting documentation. A council committee would then review the list and make its own recommendation to the full council. The language does not require that the committee recommend one of the three finalists. The proposal provides similar procedures for choosing the city auditor and the director of the Citizen Review Board.

This would be bad enough if it weren't for this council member's history with the ethics board and officer. Not only was he fined by the ethics officer last year, but since 2008 five other council members have been fined by the ethics officer. It would be natural to want to have some control over the appointment of the next ethics officer, but the council needs to recognize that although this might make them feel better, it will undermine the ethics program and, in the long run, lead to bigger scandals that further undermine the public's trust in their city government. And in them.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

203-859-1959