The District of Columbia's former chief administrative law judge
settled with the D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability
(BEGA) this week (the settlement agreement is attached; see below).
The misconduct she admitted to included her hiring of a business
partner without going through the standard hiring procedures, and
contracting with a company owned by the business partner's boyfriend
(see
my
detailed discussion of the charges against her ).
The reason this is not an update to the earlier blog post is the way in which
the judge's attorney mischaracterized the charges after the settlement was
reached. According to
an
article in the Washington Post ,
the attorney characterized the charges she admitted to in the
settlement as “technical violations relating only to the appearance
of conflict of interest, rather than an actual conflict. ... We are
pleased that our client has again been vindicated as part of this
process. ... Given that all of the serious charges relied upon by
Mayor Gray to discharge Walker are being dismissed,
. . .
Walker intends to continue to pursue her appeal to overturn Mayor
Gray’s imprudent disciplinary decision.”
The former judge should publicly criticize this statement. There
was
an actual conflict (her relationship with her business partner)
and she dealt with this conflict as irresponsibly as she could
have: she hired her business partner as a government attorney
without going through standard hiring procedures. This is not a
"technical" violation, but a clear violation, and admitting to this
violation does not "vindicate" the former judge. Dismissal of the
charges will occur only on payment of the agreed-upon sanctions for
violation of the ethics code. They are not being dismissed because
they had no validity, but rather because the matter has been
settled.
It is unacceptable for an attorney to say what he did, even if it
were at the request of his client. I was happy to see that
the litigator's online bio
says nothing about government ethics work.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
203-230-2548
DC admin law judge settlement 0714.pdf [4]