A Miscellany

Anonymous

Mon, 07/13/2009 - 12:16

City Related

Ethics Reform and Ethics
Environments 
This weekend, the Press-Enterprise
ran <a href="http://www.pe.com/localnews/opinion/editorials/stories/PE_OpEd_Opinion_…; target="”_blank”">an
excellent editorial </a>about ethics reform in San Bernardino County.
Not only do the editors recognize that watered-down, "symbolic" ethics
reform is worthless, but they also recognize that even valuable ethics
reform, such as a proposed sunshine ordinance that goes beyond state
requirements, is
"not be enough to
fix the county's shameful political culture. Ethics commissions focus
on objective rules about campaign donations, gifts, lobbying and
similar concerns. Those types of violations pale compared to the
scandals that repeatedly have rocked San Bernardino County."

What needs to happen is change in the county's ethics environment: "San Bernardino
County needs to abandon a political tradition that puts self-interest
ahead of the public good, favors well-connected insiders over taxpayers
and uses government as a personal gravy train. ... The county will
continue to see recurrent government scandals as long as the political
community keeps enabling corruption." For more background, see <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/694" target="”_blank”">my earlier blog post</a> on
ethics reform in San Bernardino County. 
 
Ethics Reform and Marion Barry 
Former Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry (now a council member) is
known for his scandals more than his leadership in the District.
Inadvertently, it looks as if yet another scandal will lead to some
serious ethics reform in the nation's capital. According to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/11/AR20090…; target="”_blank”">an
article</a> this weekend in the Washington Post, high-powered Washington
lawyer Robert S. Bennett has been appointed a special
investigator to look at a contract given to Barry's girlfriend.
Although only amounting to $5,000 a month, this contract scandal has
led the council to ask Bennett to "examine whether the council needs to
implement new ethics policies or change its contracting procedures." 
 
Right now, the <a href="http://www.dcboee.org/" target="”_blank”">D.C. Board of
Elections and Ethics</a> is focused on "elections, ballot access, and
voter registration." Hopefully, soon it will start enforcing ethics
policies, as well. 
 
Ethics Commission Members
with Political Conflicts 
How close a political relationship with the subject of an ethics
complaint should be considered sufficient to require an ethics
commission member to recuse himself? This issue was raised last month <a href="http://thejeffcrankshow.blogspot.com/2009/06/city-ethics-process-at-cri…; target="”_blank”">by
a talk-show host</a> in Colorado Springs, as well as by <a href="http://www.coloradoforethics.org/node/27494" target="”_blank”">a local good
government group</a> and at least <a href="http://www.gazette.com/opinion/city-55929-rivera-doran.html" target="”_blank”">one
of the local newspapers</a>. An ethics commission member was on the
2006 congressional steering committee of the mayor of Colorado Springs,
who has had a complaint filed against him. 
 
How divorced from politics should ethics commission members be? It
would be nice if they did not get involved in politics at all, beyond
voting. Most people aren't involved in politics, so it's not hard as
many think to put together an ethics commission consisting of just such
people. 
 
But if one feels this is too limiting, what would constitute a
conflict? Is it enough to be on a party committee with an official? To
work in the official's campaign, even in a minor role? To be on the
official's campaign or steering committee? To hold a fundraiser for an
official? To be a party committee or campaign committee chair,
treasurer, or other sort of leader? To have been appointed to a
position by the official? 
 
Merely supporting an official running for office is not enough. But is
giving a speech in support of the official? Giving more than a minor
contribution? 
 
There are no certain answers to these questions. I think it's better
that these questions not come up, that politically-involved people not
be chosen to serve on ethics commissions. But if they do accept such a
position, they should be prepared to recuse themselves whenever there
is an appearance of impropriety. For ethics
commissions, education is a more important goal than
enforcement. There is no way an ethics commission is going to teach
officials to consider how their conduct looks to the public if ethics
commission members themselves aren't willing to do this, and do it
emphatically, even where it is clearly not required by law. The goal of
education, if nothing else, should guide politically-involved ethics
commission members to treat gray situations as if they were
black-and-white. 
 
After insisting that she had no conflict (even accusing one newspaper
of having its own biases and conflicts), all this attention caused the
ethics commission member to recuse herself, according to <a href="http://www.coloradostatesman.com/content/991103-ethics-probe-colorado-s…; target="”_blank”">an
article in the Colorado </a><a href="http://www.coloradostatesman.com/content/991103-ethics-probe-colorado-s…; target="”_blank”">Statesman</a>.
The result is right, but her message is not -- the message she has given is that you can always
recuse yourself if you get enough bad publicity. If you're
lucky, you won't have to. The reason she had to was overactive news media. This is not the message ethics commission members should be sending. 
 
Competition and Conflict 
According to <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/694" target="”_blank”">an article
in El Paso's </a><a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/694" target="”_blank”">Newspaper Tree</a>, some
people are asking whether a council member has a conflict with respect
to approval of outdoor advertising rules because he owns an online
advertising firm. It's true that there is some level of competition
between online and outdoor advertising, but (i) there is no direct
financial benefit from voting one way or another on outdoor advertising
rules in El Paso, (ii) little or none of the competition is local in
character, and (iii) there is no direct competition for customers. In
fact, outdoor and online advertising firms probably share clients. 
 
An online advertising executive may very well be more rather than less
sympathetic to the requests of an outdoor advertising firm, because
advertising is important to him. It's his industry, after all. So
rather than worrying about competition with a different part of the
industry, maybe those concerned with a conflict here should be worrying
about them being in the same industry. But either way, it's not clear
that there is a conflict that would make the council member's
participation appear biased one way or the other. 
 
Robert Wechsler 
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics 
 
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