The Good and Bad of Palm Beach County's EC Selection Process
The independent selection of EC members is a great thing for making
a government ethics program appear independent of those under its
jurisdiction and for ensuring that an ethics commission remains
fully stocked with members. But how this selection process is
actually accomplished matters, too.<br>
<br>
There is good and bad in the Palm Beach County (FL) ethics
commission selection process, as can be seen from recent events, <a href="http://www.courant.com/topic/sfl-palm-beach-county-ethics-commission-ap…; target="”_blank”">as
chronicled in a <i>Sun-Sentinel</i> article</a>.<br>
<br>
<b>The Good</b><br>
The good is how swiftly the selection process has worked. A
different organization selects each seat on the ethics commission.
When the member selected by the association of chiefs of police
resigned, the seat was quickly filled. When the term of the
member selected by the president of Florida Atlantic University
ended, the seat was quickly filled. And, according to <a href="http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2014-02-26/news/sfl-priore-joining-eth…; target="”_blank”">another
<i>Sun-Sentinel</i> article</a>, six weeks after another member died in
office, the Palm Beach County League of Cities selected someone to
fill her seat.<br>
<br>
The norm in other cities is for seats to remain open for months,
sometimes for years. Mayors and council members do not appear to put
a high priority on filling EC seats. Often, there are simply too
many board and commission seats to fill, but often it is not in
their interest to make it easy for an EC to function. With multiple
open seats, ECs find it hard to get a quorum to do business. That suits many high-level officials just fine.<br>
<br>
<b>The Bad</b><br>
There are two bad aspects to the Palm Beach County EC selection
process. One is that the organizations tend to select their own
members or former members. The police chiefs selected a former
police chief. The League of Cities selected a former mayor. And
Florida Atlantic University selected a professor. The professor is
much less problematic than former high-level officials, who may be seen as
favoring officials who come before them.<br>
<br>
Organizations given the authority to select EC members should be
told that they should not necessarily pick their own, especially if
they have held high public office, such as police chiefs and mayors.
It is important that EC members be seen as unbiased, and no one will
consider a former mayor or police chief unbiased toward other
high-level officials.<br>
<br>
The second problem with the selection process is allowing such
organizations to participate in the first place. Clearly, they do
not sufficiently appreciate conflicts of interest issues to select
people who will appear to be unbiased and who are unlikely to have
personal or political relationships with those who come before them.
Such organizations should be replaced by other organizations whose
members and former members do not tend to have these relationships
or that will agree not to select such individuals.<br>
<br>
In addition, the League of Cities has been active in trying to undermine the Palm Beach County ethics program (see <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/florida-league-cities-ethics-reform-p…; target="”_blank”">my blog post on this</a>). Any organization whose parent organization lobbies against an ethics program and whose membership consists of those under the ethics program's jurisdiction should not be permitted to select EC members.<br>
<br>
On the whole, good government organizations, non-governmental
professional associations, and nonpolitical civic groups make much
better participants in an independent EC selection process. <br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
---