Arguments Against Having City or County Attorney as Ethics Officer
The role of the city or county attorney in an ethics program
continues to be a major bone of contention, despite the fact that
government ethics professionals generally take the position that the
city or county attorney should not be involved in an ethics program.<br>
<br>
The latest locale for this dispute is Jefferson Parish, a suburb of
New Orleans with about 430,000 people. According to <a href="http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/12/jefferson_parish_ethics_…; target="”_blank”">an
article this week in the <i>Times-Picayune</i></a>, after the resignation
of the parish's ethics officer, a council member has proposed to
hand the job over to the parish attorney. To support his proposal,
he asked the state ethics board, which has jurisdiction over local
officials, whether this was allowed. The ethics board responded
that, "There is nothing in the [state] Code of Ethics that prevents
a
board or commission from assigning additional duties to a public
servant."<br>
<br>
But additional duties is not the problem here. The problem
involves a number of different issues, which I detailed in <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/many-reasons-why-city-or-county-attor…; target="”_blank”">a
recent blog post about a dispute in Honolulu</a>. Here is
a list of the issues relating only to ethics advice, an ethics
officer's most important role:<blockquote>
Parish attorney ethics advice:<br>
<br>
1. Is seen as favoring official-clients and, therefore, not trusted
by the public.<br>
<br>
2. Is not considered a best practice by large American cities.<br>
<br>
3. Creates a conflict I: a parish attorney's sole job is to advise
agencies, departments, and bodies,
not individuals. When a conflicted individual comes for advice, he
has interests in the matter that
are completely distinct from the interests of his agency,
department, or body.<br><br>
4. Creates a conflict II: A parish attorney has multiple
relationships with many of those who would seek ethics advice:
political, personal, professional, and superior-subordinate.<br><br>
5. Involves a different skill set than legal advice.<br><br>
6. Sometimes creates different confidentiality/transparency concerns than
advice from an independent ethics officer, thereby undermining the
transparency of the ethics program.</blockquote>
Fortunately, the parish president and the chief administrative
officer both oppose handing the job over to the parish attorney. The
CAO is quoted as saying, "It remains the administration's
position, based upon a review of 'best practices' in the industry,
that the
Department of Governmental and Ethics Compliance remain as a
stand-alone
department." He is right. I refer to city attorney ethics advice as
the Texas Approach, because among large cities, most of the ones
that allow this are in Texas. Otherwise, it is not considered a best
practice, for the reasons listed above, and more (for more reasons, see <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/files/lgep1-0%20-%20Robert%20Wechsler.htm#Loc…; target="”_blank”">the relevant section of my book <i>Local Government Ethics Programs</i></a>).<br>
<br>
What is unusual here is that the parish attorney does not appear to
have taken a public position on the issue. But the CAO says that the
parish attorney, which is acting as ethics officer until this
dispute is over, is not looking to continue in this position. This
means that it is likely that another independent ethics officer will
be selected. Let's hope that Jefferson Parish's officials let the ethics program hire the ethics
officer, and keep all officials out of the process (they are already
out of the process of selecting ethics board members, following
another best practice).<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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