Ethics News from San Diego

There's a lot of ethics news from San Diego today. First, the judge in the San Diego campaign finance case has clarified his ruling.

Second, the case involving the former president of the Center City Development Corp. is going to a hearing before the San Diego ethics commission next week. The allegations of the EC's general counsel list 34 counts of influencing a municipal decision when it was reasonably foreseeable that the decision would have a material financial impact on the former CCDC president's economic interests. The 34 counts are instances of her participation in matters where she is alleged to have had a conflict.

I had written in an earlier blog post that this matter was being dealt with by the district attorney as a criminal case (he could not prove a conflict beyond a reasonable doubt, settling for a misdemeanor plea of failure to disclose), and that it would not be going before the EC, but I was clearly wrong.

Finally, here's something you don't see every day:  a discussion of government ethics among local newspaper editors. The discussion was sparked by a San Diego council member's criticisms of the city's ethics commission (see my blog post on the criticisms). You can read the discussion or listen to it (13 minutes long).

Topics that arise include selection of EC members (there's apparently an attempt to take this away from elected officials), underfunding the EC, control of the EC budget, the use of the word "ethics" in the name of a body that primarily handles campaign finance laws, the complexity of the campaign finance laws, equal treatment by the EC, transparency, public financing, and the value of having a city EC. No depth clearly, but a lot of breadth in this unusual discussion.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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