A Miscellany

Party Committee Members on EC
According to an article in the Hartford Courant this week, a Newington, CT mayoral candidate, and council minority leader, who has made ethics allegations against the incumbent mayor has chosen not to file an ethics complaint because, she says, two of the four members of the town's ethics board are also members of the opposing party's town committee, one of them the nominating chair of the committee.

This is a problem with many ethics commissions that are selected by high-level officials and have few if any limitations on who can be a member. Officials and party committee members on an ethics commission cannot be seen as being neutral with respect to the officials, especially elected officials, who come before them.

The incumbent mayor alleges that his opponent refuses to file a complaint because the ethics process is confidential. She wants it to be in the newspapers, he says. But allegations are not confidential just because they're being considered by an ethics board. It's only the investigation itself that is confidential, until a finding of probable cause.

Nepotism and Other Conflicts Disenfranchise
I recently wrote a blog post about the argument that an elected official's withdrawal due to a conflict of interest "disenfranchises" that official's constituents. In my research, I came across an opinion piece from Vermont that takes the opposite position, using the same language.

Sue Prent, in the Green Mountain Daily this August, wrote about the huge amount of nepotism in local governments in the state and the weak state laws that govern conflicts in these communities. She wrote that "A few large and well-connected families effectively hold the collective reigns of local decision making in many communities; so that we routinely see cousins issuing permit approvals to cousins."

To illustrate the problem, she shares a story from 2007, when a clerk-treasurer confessed to having embezzled $100,000 from a town of about 500 people. The town was governed, and the clerk-treasurer overseen, by a three-person board consisting of the clerk-treasurer's father, boyfriend, and an unrelated individual. When his daughter confessed to the crime, the father bought her house so she would have the money to make restitution for her crime.

But the more common problems, she points out, involve permits and jobs. Bad behavior based on nepotism and other conflicts, Prent argues, "disenfranchises citizens and rob communities of the value they can get from open minds, constructive dissent, and creative vision."

Prent calls for Vermont to pass stronger conflicts of interest laws that apply to local governments.

Better Earlier Than Late
Nearly a year ago, I wrote a blog post about the ethical tribulations of Winnipeg's mayor. According to a Canadian Broadcasting article this week, the mayor has now announced that he will talk with the provincial premier about getting an ethics commissioner for Winnipeg.

This would be great news if the city council had not already, back in 2009, voted to create such a position, and had not the province already, back in 2009, told the mayor the city had the authority to create the position.

It appears that Winnipeg's mayor should withdraw from this matter and leave it to the council.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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