Stamford Official's Attempt to Prevent Government Employees from Filing Ethics Complaints Is Nipped in the Bud

<br>
There's a new twist to the ethics mess in Stamford, which I described
in <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/stamford-ethics-controversy-involving…; target="”_blank”">a
blog post last week</a>. It turns out that, according to <a href="http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/default/article/Ethics-board-dismisses-…; target="”_blank”">an
article
in the Stamford <i>Advocate</i></a>, a board of finance
member, against whom an ethics complaint had been brought, charged that the city employee who filed the complaint "violated the code because in filing a complaint he sought to preserve his employment with the city and therefore influence
[the respondent] 'for his own financial gain.'"<br>
<br>

According to this argument, a government employee who files an ethics complaint has
a conflict of interest, because he is presumably doing it to preserve
his pay check. If this were held to be the case, government employees
could not file ethics
complaints unless they first resigned, there would be no
whistleblower protection, and intimidation would rule.<br>
<br>
Fortunately, the Stamford ethics board dismissed the board of finance
member's complaint.<br>
<br>
The board of finance member insists that the ethics board's dismissal
was the result of partisan bias, since its members were appointed
by the former Democratic mayor (itself a partisan dig, since the former
mayor is now running for governor). As self-serving as such an argument
may be, preventing elected officials from
making the argument is a good argument for having elected officials
stay out of the ethics commission selection process.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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