Transition Team Conflicts in Sacramento

Sacramento recently had an interesting situation, which set off accusations of conflicts of interest. According to an article in the Sacramento Bee, the newly-elected weak mayor came into office with a volunteer transition team, consisting primarily of people who have business with the city or represent people and entities that have business with the city.

The head of the transition team was a partner with a firm that represents some of the city's big players, including a "company looking to the city for millions of dollars in assistance to redevelop the 240-acre downtown railyard site; and ... a company pushing a controversial proposal to transform a rock formation underlying a neighborhood on the city's southeast side into a storage facility for natural gas." Other members of this firm were on the transition team, as well.

Members of the transition team sat in on meetings with high-level city officials, on topics including the council agenda, labor negotiations, the railyard site, and the gas field deal. These meetings were closed to the public, and may have included confidential information (although the assistant city manager denied this).

One council member has publicly stated his concern about this practice, and has asked that the city attorney brief the council on conflict of interest issues. The Bee, in an editorial, has also expressed concern: "The mayor's unprecedented use of volunteers creates an unavoidable appearance of conflict. ... Whose interests does the mayor think [the transition team leader] represents when he sits in on such meetings – [the mayor's], the city's or those of his firm's clients?"

The editorial goes on to say, "Volunteers signed conflict-of-interest statements before participating, but [the mayor] has not made those statements public. Not even city staff members have seen them. Such statements are unlikely to reassure business interests who may be competing against railyard developers for city funds or residents who oppose the gas storage project."

One thing that can be said in the mayor's favor is that there has been transparency about the use of these volunteers, and the team was quickly disbanded.

But what the transition team leader said does not give one confidence in his ability, or willingness, to understand conflict of interest issues. He is quoted as saying, "There is no conflict; we were volunteers. None of us had any kind of representation capacity. We were there strictly as volunteers assisting the city in getting information, and there was certainly no kind of technical conflict."

What difference does it make that they were not paid for their efforts? If anything, professionals offering their services freely could be seen as giving a gift, and gifts should not be accepted from people who do business with the city, directly or indirectly.

How can he say that no one on the transition team "had any kind of representation capacity"? A conflict of interest involves a conflict between interests, including those of an individual's employers or clients. Whether they were actively representing a particular client means very little in terms of whether there was a conflict. In any event, how could anyone tell? We have only the word of someone with an apparent conflict.

What does it mean to have "no kind of technical conflict"? Is this an admission that there was a conflict, only the team members did not technically violate a particular law? I don't know of any ethics code that deals with a transition team, but one need only look at the Obama transition to see how much at least one government official thinks ethics are highly relevant to limits on who is on a transition team and what each individual does. After this extremely public attempt to bring ethics to a transition, it is hard to believe that anyone could act as if conflict of interest issues in a transition were not both important and complex.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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