A Miscellany
<b>It's Not the Dead Bodies, It's the Living Ones</b><br>
"He knows where the bodies are buried at Metro." According to a
local mayor as quoted in <a href="http://www.mapleridgenews.com/news/239509171.html" target="”_blank”">an
article yesterday in the Surrey North <i>Delta Leader</i></a>, this is an
important qualification for someone going from Metro Vancouver (BC)
treasurer to lobbyist for the company that runs the local landfill.
It just so happens that the mayor's town is working with the
landfill company to extend the landfill into his town. Also last year, the same
company hired a provincial legislator to be a lobbyist.<br>
<br>
The problem with the revolving door between city/province and a
company doing business with and regulated by city and province is
not only knowing where bodies are buried, but also having close personal,
professional, and political relationships with live individuals in
the governments, and knowing and having special access to
confidential information that is useful to the company. After a
cooling-off period, the information one knows is less likely to give
the company an advantage, and many contacts will not be buried, but
will be gone from government and not in a position to give the
company preferential treatment due to having a former colleague on
staff.<br>
<br>
For government ethics, it's not the dead bodies, but the live ones
that matter.<br>
<br>
<b>Privatization and Post-Employment Rules</b><br>
According to <a href="http://neighbornewspapers.com/view/full_story/24345955/article-County-t…; target="”_blank”">an
article on the neighborhoodnewspapers.com website this week</a>,
Fulton County (GA) is considering the elimination of the one-year
wait time between leaving county employment and working for one of
its consultants. This is a valuable post-employment rule. But county
commissioners are concerned that it gets in the way of privatizing
some of the government's functions.<br>
<br>
The problem is that privatization is sometimes recommended and
accomplished by the very government officials and employees who will
profit from it. Therefore, a change to this rule for the purpose of
allowing privatization should allow the cooling-off period to be
removed only with respect to officials and employees who did not
participate in any way in the privatization process.<br>
<br>
The best approach to this problem is to allow the ethics board,
after a public hearing, to waive the requirement after a finding
that the official or employee was not involved in the privatization
process and/or that the privatization was sufficiently important and
necessary as to override concerns about the misuse of the officials'
or employees' position.<br>
<br>
<b>Good Advice to New Board of Ed Members</b><br>
According to <a href="http://www.shorenewstoday.com/snt/news/index.php/ocean-city-general-new…; target="”_blank”">an article yesterday in the Ocean City (NJ) <i>Gazette</i></a>,
Ocean City's school board attorney gave some good advice to new board of
education members. “You have the authority to sit as a board,” he
said. “You don’t have authority, individually, to act on your own.
You can’t make any promises. You do not
have the authority. It’s an ethics violation to promise someone that
you can help them as an individual.”<br>
<br>
<b>Transparency Comes to Santa Clara County</b><br>
It's refreshing to read an editorial in which the editors say that "it's great to be proven
wrong" with respect to their estimation of a winning candidate's
likelihood to improve transparency in government. <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_24869828/mercury-news-editorial-c…; target="”_blank”">Such
an editorial appeared in the San Jose <i>Mercury News</i> this week</a>.<br>
<br>
Elected last August, the new Santa Clara County supervisor has
gotten the county board
to make their calendars public, and obtained "unanimous approval
for tightening the county's lobbyist ordinance, calling for more
disclosure, an online database and other improvements to the
current flimsy rules." Next in line is making searchable databases
for campaign contributions and for county contracts.<br>
<br>
Considering that the <a href="http://www.scu.edu/ethics/" target="”_blank”">Markkula
Center for Applied Ethics</a> is right there at Santa Clara
University, it's about time the county is getting its act
together.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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