The
Council on Governmental
Ethics Laws has great instincts for meeting where the ethics problems are greatest. Last
year it met in Chicago. This year it will be Maricopa County, AZ (the
Phoenix area).
See update below
A couple months ago,
I
wrote about the Maricopa County sheriff's self-promotion that
appears to rise to the level of a conflict of interest. Now the county
supervisors and the county attorney (with the county sheriff at his
side) are at war (and the county judiciary has also been implicated).
The conflicts are rampant.
What's this all about? According to
an article
this week in the East Valley
Tribune,
it started with the county attorney bringing an indictment
against a county supervisor with 118 criminal counts alleging he failed
to list business and real
estate interests on financial disclosure statements he is required to
file as an elected official. What should be criminal about
not filing a complete disclosure statement?
According to
an
article in the Phoenix
New Times, seven days after the board of
supervisors voted to investigate possible conflicts of the county
attorney relating to this indictment, the county attorney, working with
the county sheriff I wrote about in January, subpoenaed the board of
supervisors as part of a grand jury investigation into possible crimes
by county officials with respect to an approved $340 million county
court building.
According to the article, the county attorney's office had provided
extensive legal assistance
to the county during the preparation of the court building proposal. On
this basis, the county filed motions to kick the county attorney off
the
investigation and quash the grand jury subpoena. Here's
what the judge
had to say :
The issue is the ethical propriety of
the Board's attorney seeking documents as part of a grand jury
investigation from the attorney's client. For example, as noted by the
State, the State is requesting production of all contracts related to
the court tower. ... The subpoena duces tecum also requires production
of all correspondence and emails related to the court tower. According
to the Board's motion, the Maricopa County Attorney gave the Board
legal advice regarding those very contracts including having attended
executive sessions of the Board of Supervisors, [and] approved all
procurements and contracts ... The correspondence and email request.is
not limited to nonconfidential communications; therefore, it arguably
includes confidential correspondence between the Board and its former
attorney, the Maricopa County Attorney. In that the Maricopa County
Attorney's Office was counsel for the Board and gave the Board legal
advice regarding the court tower, this Court finds that the Maricopa
County Attorney's Office has a conflict of interest that disqualifies
it from conducting an investigation of its client on the very topic on
which it gave legal advice to its client.
That's pretty clear. The solution is to have a special prosecutor,
without a conflict, appointed. That seems reasonable. So how did the
county attorney and the county sheriff respond? Here's their press
release:
Grand
Jury investigation of $340,000,000 Court Tower thwarted
We are very concerned that the Superior Court, by disregarding
the rulings of higher courts, has blocked an important grand-jury
investigation of itself and its own employees. This is surely a
conflict of interest by the court itself if there ever was one. This
ruling has been appealed to the same higher courts that have already
upheld such investigations and prosecutions.
Important questions have arisen regarding
the funding and
contracts for the new $340 million-dollar court tower. This ruling
suggests county and court officials believe they don't have to answer
these questions. We believe they should and the public has a right to
know.
Sheriff Arpaio adds, "I want the
taxpayers of Maricopa County to
know that these unjust actions against the County Attorney will not
deter the Sheriff's Office investigation and we will move forward with
a vigorous investigation of the court tower as well as our other
corruption cases."
To the county attorney, everyone but him is a criminal and has a
conflict of interest, even the county judge. He and his buddy are all
good, and everyone else is thwarting and unjust and corrupt. A special prosecutor would likely be evil, too.
Also full of spite, the board of supervisors, according to the
New Times article, responded to
the indictment of one of its members by taking away the county
attorney's civil litigation department.
As I have said, there is no more difficult position, with respect to
conflicts, than a local government attorney. But when the local
government attorney can bring indictments against his own clients, the
problem goes well beyond conflicts. When the same county attorney is
politically involved, it is disastrous.
What does this war among politicians say to the people of Maricopa County? That
justice gives way to politics. That conflicts are so rampant in
Maricopa County that everything is personal and nothing is done in the
public interest.
Update: According to an editorial in the Arizona Republic this week, the county attorney has turned the two controversial criminal cases over to another county. However, he still insists that he had no conflict bringing criminal actions against people his office counseled.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
203-230-2548
