A Miscellany

Conning Citizens
Car towing is one of the biggest temptations in local government. A police officer goes to the scene of an accident, and one or more drivers needs to have their cars towed. The drivers are injured or at least in shock, and rarely thinking straight. The officer has been offered so many dollars per car that he steers to a towing company or a bodywork shop with a tow truck. No one will know and no one will be hurt. It might be called a kickback, but it's no more than doing a service for the towing company, a way of moonlighting on the job. At least that's what the officer tells himself.

According to an article in the Baltimore Sun, not only were more than thirty Baltimore police officers charged with taking kickbacks from towing companies and another fourteen suspended, but pretty much the same thing happened in 1956 and 1965. The kickback amount went up from $5 to $10 to a whopping $300 in 2010. There are allegations that more was going on than just kickbacks, and this dollar amount seems to confirm that.

What's so horrible here is less the kickbacks than the fact that police officers were playing a con game with citizens who are in a bad situation and trust their judgment. This is a very damaging misuse of one's office.

The Game of Dotting All the I's
Judges can be very rough when it comes to conflict problems. Take the judge in a case filed by the zoning board of Clifton, NJ according to an article in yesterday's Record. In approving the appointment of two zoning board members, a council member recused herself and did not participate. But she did not leave the dias. The judge found that because the law requires a council member to at the very least join the audience, if not leave the room altogether, the two zoning board members could not vote on a particular matter before them. It is true that the matter was involved in the council member's conflict. But she did not participate or vote on the appointments.

The council member is asking the judge to reconsider. And I think the judge should. The council member's mistake should be used to educate the council and other boards in the city, not to prevent the zoning board members to act.

An interesting secondary issue involves the city attorney, who advised the council member about her recusal and her involvement in the matter (she is a member of an organization opposed to allowing a synagogue to be built). After advising the council member, the city attorney then represented the zoning board in its attempt to have the council member's actions found to violate the ethics provision. The council member is arguing that he should have recused himself due to this conflict, and that his failure to recuse himself puts into question the court proceeding.

In other words, two can play at this game.

A Nepotistic Pretzel
There's an interesting nepotism situation in Valparaiso, IN. According to an article in the Post-Tribune, the fire department has hired the fire chief's son, who scored top on the test. But the city has the following nepotism provision in its ethics code:

No family member of a public official may be employed by the city if the public official has the direct responsibility for hiring, firing,  promotion, or other disciplinary actions with regard to such employee.

So how could the son be hired? The chief must be directly involved in hiring, firing, promotion, and discipline, mustn't he? As it turns out, the chief is only involved directly in promotion, and only as a member of a three-person board, from which he could easily recuse himself.

But of course the people who hire, fire, promote, and discipline most likely report to the chief, so there is a strong appearance of impropriety.

According to an article on the nwi.com website, the city attorney said that if the ethics commission decides the situation is improper, the city still intends to hire the son. If the chief were demoted, his son would be under his direct supervision.

Couldn't the son have applied to another fire department? Did he make the decision without asking his father? If he asked his father, and the father told him to apply without asking the ethics commission for permission, perhaps the father should be fired. But he certainly should not be demoted to a position of direct supervision over his son.

And what if the father is ready to retire? Should his son be hired because there would be no supervision issue and the father was not involved in the hiring decision? Nepotism in uniformed departments is so common and so much a part of the culture that most local governments won't even pass nepotism provisions. But if they do pass such provisions, exceptions should not be made, especially with respect to the children of high-ranking officials.

An Ethics Officer for Memphis
According to an article last week in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Memphis finally has both an ethics commission and an ethics officer, although you can't find any sign of either on the Memphis website.

It took three years after the ethics code was passed for the ethics commission members to be sworn in, and then another year for the full-time ethics officer to be hired.

It's not a great code (see my blog post from last October), but at least there will be some administration now. At last.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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