Prince George's County (MD) Ethics Reforms Good, But Incomplete
<b>Update:</b> March 19, 2011 (see below)<br>
<br>
Last December I wrote <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/pay-play-culture-prince-georges-count…; target="”_blank”">a
long blog post</a> about the pay-to-play culture of Prince George's
County, Maryland. The new county executive and the county's state
representatives appear to have been working hard to make changes to end
this pay-to-play culture, although you wouldn't know it from <a href="http://www.princegeorgescountymd.gov/pdf/Baker2010TransitionTeamTransit…; target="”_blank”">the
new county executive's transition report</a>, which came out last week.
The report focuses on development, and makes no mention of the county's
pay-to-play culture.<br>
<br>
On February 11, three bills (<a href="http://mlis.state.md.us/2011rs/bills/hb/hb1076f.pdf" target="”_blank”">HB 1076</a>,
<a href="http://mlis.state.md.us/2011rs/bills/hb/hb0993f.pdf" target="”_blank”">HB 993</a>,
<a href="http://mlis.state.md.us/2011rs/bills/hb/hb1103f.pdf" target="”_blank”">HB 1103</a>)
were introduced to the Maryland House that would make extensive ethics
changes. The bills would deal with the moribund ethics program by
providing the county ethics board with an executive director, and also
providing an ethics advisor. They would require the ethics board to meet
twice a year, which is insufficient if it is going to be a force in the
county and if there is going to be a true ethics program.<br>
<br>
The other changes involve simply dealing with particular problems
in the past, without any attempt to create a complete ethics program or
pay-to-play legislation. The solutions are good and clever, but this is
not the way to go about ethics reform. Hopefully, this will be the
first, crisis-oriented step that will be followed by the creation of a
more complete ethics program.<br>
<br>
Here are the other proposed changes:<ul>
Prohibit lobbyists from engaging in lobbying activities for contingent
compensation<br>
<br>
Prohibit the issuance of credit cards to elected county officials<br>
<br>
Prohibit elected county officials from soliciting restricted sources to
enter into a business relationship with, or to provide anything of
value to, them or others<br>
<br>
Establish a Board of Planning and Zoning Appeals that would take some
authority away from the county council<br>
<br>
Prohibit county council members from participating in proceedings
related to land use applications if their campaign or political
committee, or a slate to which the member belongs, has received any
contribution from the applicant or any agent of the applicant within
the prior 36 months or during the consideration of the application. The
applicant is required to file a disclosure statement of its
contributions and its solicitation of such contributions by others.<br>
<br>
Prohibit the council from calling up site plans
of planning board decisions on their own (this was a tactic used by
council members to get pay-to-play concessions (money and jobs) from
developers hoping to get a project approved)</ul>
The council and the county's state representatives have compromised on
the last prohibition, which has stolen media attention away from the
rest of the ethics package. According to <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/maryland/2011/02/pg-council-support…; target="”_blank”">an
article in the Washington <i>Examiner</i></a>, the council did not want to
lose the ability to call up planning board appeals. The compromise
allows them to do so, but limits the time in which they can do it to
205 days, which seems a long time to hold up a development, enough to
effectively blackmail developers.<br>
<br>
According to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/politics/bill-would-end-pay-to-play…; target="”_blank”">an
article in Wednesday's Washington <i>Post</i></a>, the amended bill passed the
county's House delegation unanimously and will likely soon be approved
by the General Assembly.<br>
<br>
<b>Update:</b> March 19, 2011<br>
<a href="http://www.gazette.net/stories/03182011/prinnew160957_32585.php" target="”_blank”">An article in yesterday's <i>Gazette</i></a> makes it clear that Prince George's County's house delegation was not happy with the compromise package and, as one of them is quoted as saying, they "won't be afraid to revisit this issue in the future." It appears that the county executive's pressure worked to get the compromise through.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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