Trash Talk in Tulsa

A trash board member attends a homeowners association meeting to
talk about potential
changes to the city’s residential trash service. Also in attendance is a representative from the company
that has the city's landfill contract. After the trash board member
makes a short speech, she leaves the meeting and asks the company
representative to answer questions from the audience. This was apparently not
planned.<br>
<br>
The city's trash collector, under a contract up for renewal and for
which the landfill company plans to bid, asks the trash board member to
withdraw from participation with respect to the trash collection
contract, because she gave the appearance to the homeowners association
that the landfill company was authorized to speak on behalf of the
trash board and, therefore, that it would be collecting trash in the
future.<br>
<br>
This is what happened recently in Tulsa, according to <a href="http://www2.tulsaworld.com/site/printerfriendlystory.aspx?articleid=201…; target="”_blank”">an
article
in the Tulsa <i>World</i> this week</a>. What appears to have been a
happenstance encounter at a public meeting, and asking a vendor to
answer questions within his knowledge, is turned by a competing vendor
into an ethics issue.<br>
<br>

The result so far is that the trash board member was passed over for
the chairmanship of the board, which would otherwise have been hers,
and the bid has been delayed pending an investigation by the mayor's
office (even though the city does have an ethics advisory committee,
which is intended to provide ethics advice).<br>
<br>
The trash collector believes the trash board member violated these
provisions of the ethics handbook:<ul>

“requires
the highest standard of honesty, integrity, impartiality and conduct to
gain and maintain the confidence of the public in city government.” and
The ethics handbook also states that city officials shall avoid any
action that might result in or create the appearance of “failing to use
proper independence or impartiality in the performance of duties of
office and employment.”</ul>

As in so many cases I've seen, in support of their desire to undermine
the integrity of individuals they don't like, people point not to
enforceable ethics
provisions, but to aspirational provisions, even, in this case, words
from an ethics handbook.<br>
<br>
It's interesting that, according to the article, "the council has been
eyeing the possibility of stripping the board of its contracting
responsibilities and reducing it to an advisory body."<br>
<br>
It's also interesting that last year, according to <a href="http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=334&articleid=201…; target="”_blank”">an article in
yesterday's Tulsa <i>World</i></a>, the
trash board member accused the then chair and others of "negotiating
behind the scenes on dealings that should involve the entire membership
and of cutting off discussions." In other words, she was already in the
doghouse.<br>
<br>
So what we
have here is a minor incident turned into a major political football,
involving the mayor (investigation), the council (an excuse for
stripping the board of its powers), a board election, and a vendor
trying to protect its contract by ridding the board of someone who,
presumably, is not sympathethic to it.<br>
<br>
The fact that not a single ethics provision appears to have been
mentioned before starting a public investigation, and that the ethics
advisory committee is being kept out of the matter, leads one to
believe that this is not an ethics issue at all, but the use of ethics
allegations for other purposes.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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