Here are three different recusal case studies:

Public Recusal Is Not Enough
One of the most important things to emphasize about recusal is that recusal at a meeting is not enough. Recusal is supposed to mean withdrawal from involvement in any aspect of a matter where an official has a conflict of interest. Recusal at a meeting is only withdrawal from the public part of a matter. If the official continues to be involved with the matter behind the scenes, it is, in some ways, worse than ignoring a conflict of interest in public, because then no one knows the official is acting despite a conflict. In fact, it gives the impression that the official is dealing responsibly with his or her conflict, when in fact this is not the case.

According to an article in  Inland Valley (CA) [1]Daily Bulletin [1], this apparently was the situation with a school board member, who worked behind the scenes to get contracts for his employer. He ended up getting caught and pleading guilty to a felony conflict-of-interest charge, with thirty days in prison. The school board member blamed school district administrators and attorneys for poor advice.

And this may very well have been the case. Too much emphasis is placed on recusal from voting (and in fact this is often the rule), so that many people don't understand that recusal involves withdrawal from all aspects and stages of a matter.

Was There Recusal in the Seventeenth Century?
Here's an interesting conflict in Marblehead (MA), a town I lived in many years ago. Back in the late seventeenth century, Marblehead was one of the largest cities in the colonies, and it hasn't grown much (about 23,000 pop.). Keeping its historic feel is important both for tourism and for town identity.

According to an article in yesterday's Lynn [2]Daily Item [2], the chair of the Marblehead Old and Historic Districts Commission has a business, Old Town Repair [3], that specializes in restoring historical windows and doors. The commission rejected a resident's request to put in more energy-efficient double-pane windows that look just like the old single-pane windows, and the resident is accusing the chair of having a conflict, since it is his business to restore single-pane windows, which might go the way of the dinosaur if new, more efficient windows were permitted.

Does the chair have a conflict? He's certainly conflicted, even though he would not necessarily profit from the rejection of any single request for approval of a double-pane window. I would advise him to recuse himself from window and door requests like this, but an ethics commission would have a difficult time deciding whether to find against him for failure to recuse.

The Feeble Defenses of Those Who Fail to Recuse Themselves
Genesee County (MI, home of Flint) has had two recent situations where officials with apparent conflicts voted anyway, according to an article in the Swartz Creek [4]News [4]. A township trustee voted to reappoint her husband as building inspector, and a school board member voted to give his sister, a school superintendent, a raise.

The school board member defended himself by saying that "he votes as a board member, not as a brother." That's helpful.

The township trustee had a whole host of defenses. She said she checked with the Michigan Townships Association to make sure she could vote on building department issues (does a township association have any authority over or expertise in government ethics?). She says that voters knew who her husband was when she ran for office (he had been building inspector, but had been removed from office). She said that their money is separate (does this mean they don't live together or have children?). And she said that her vote wasn't a tie-breaker: "Even if I wouldn't have voted, he still would have gotten the job."

Would the Michigan Townships Association have told her that none of these arguments is relevant to whether she should have recused herself? Voters didn't know the husband would be reappointed, and didn't vote to let the wife vote for him in any event (and do many voters really know who the building inspector is?). The closeness of the vote is irrelevant to a conflict and, in any event, how can one be sure when discussion begins on a matter, and the choice of recusal must be made, how close the vote will be?

How a couple handles their money is also irrelevant to whether there is a conflict -- he's still her husband. No ethics code distinguishes among couples with different accounting regimes, or even between those married or separated.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics

203-230-2548