A Debate About the EC Selection Process

According to an article yesterday in the Rockdale Citizen, Rockdale County, GA's county commission is having a debate on how to select its three-member ethics board and its alternates. Unfortunately, it's a debate that is being waged with no reference to best practices and almost no outside professional input. It's as if a debate about a construction project were to include little input from or reference to the work of engineers or planners. I point this out not because it is atypical, but because it is all too typical.

Currently, the three members of the county's ethics board are selected as follows, according to a July 22 article in the same newspaper:

One member selected by the County Board of Commissioners (BOC)
One member selected by the Rockdale County Bar Association
One county employee selected by the Rockdale Coalition of Homeowners and Civic Associations

But this selection process does not appear to have worked. In 2008, only one ethics board member was selected. And the selection process seems to have stopped right there.

In 2009, the current chair of the BOC appointed members of a citizens committee to make recommendations for improvements to the county's ethics program. It recommended that the bar association continue to select one ethics board member, with the other two to be appointed respectively by the county's Republican and Democratic party committees.

The chair supports this approach, saying that it is not his, but rather a citizens committee's. But considering that it is highly unusual for party committees to select ethics board members, one wonders where the committee came up with this idea, which alternatives it considers, and which publications and individuals it consulted.

Another commissioner says, “I don’t think we need to engage a political party with governing a board from an ethics standpoint. We’ve got enough politics involved in day-to-day operations as it is.” This is right. Political parties should not be involved with a government ethics program, not only because this politicizes it, but also because its candidates are the very people who will come before the board, making their selected members conflicted. There is nothing worse than a conflict of interest at the heart of a program dealing with conflicts of interest.

Another commissioner points out that the citizens committee was appointed by the chair, not by the commission as a whole, implying that it reflects the chair's views, rather than the chair reflecting the citizens' views. Whether true or not, this is how it appears.

The two commissioners prefer the following selection process:  one member selected by each of the Conyers-Rockdale Chamber of Commerce, the Rockdale County Bar Association, and the Board of Commissioners. They supported their argument with information from the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia and the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia. At least they consulted someone.

The commissioners also say that it is wrong to have a county employee on an ethics board. But they don't say that it is also wrong to have a board member selected by the BOC, over which the board has jurisdiction. And, although it is good to have community organizations select ethics board members (see my blog post on this), a chamber of commerce is an important lobbying group and political player and, therefore, is not the best community organization for this purpose.

But at least Rockdale County is having this discussion. Hopefully, the BOC members will more carefully consider the selection processes that have been raised and the best practice for ethics board selection, as stated in my book Local Government Ethics Programs: The involvement in an ethics program of no one under its jurisdiction, including the selection of ethics commission members by community organizations rather than by local government officials.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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