Common Errors Involving Ethics Commission Jurisdiction
I recently wrote about the problem of having a toothless ethics commission in a Connecticut city.
According to <a href="http://www.newstimes.com/ci_11960785" target="”_blank”">an article</a>
in yesterday's Danbury <span>News-Times,</span>
it's <i>good</i> that another Connecticut municipality's ethics commission
is toothless.<br>
<br>
But the story has less to do with teeth than it has to do with what
government ethics is all about. It's that word "ethics" again. Ethics
is about good behavior, but government ethics is about conflicts of
interest. It's hard for a lot of people to accept this. I get calls all
the time from people who want advice about officials' misbehavior that
does not fall under the jurisdiction of any ethics commission.<br>
<br>
Some of those people happen to serve on ethics commissions. And some laws are so
vague that almost anything seems to fall under the ethics commission's
jurisdiction.<br>
<br>
Take Brookfield, CT. The old ethics code said that it governed "the
conduct of all elected and appointed officials and all employees..."
That's very broad.<br>
<br>
The <a href="http://www.brookfield.org/docs-forms/Ordinances/Approved_Code_of_Ethics…; target="”_blank”">new
ethics code</a>, passed last August, rephrases but preserves this breadth. It says that it
"sets forth the standards for conduct by which officers/employees shall
conduct all public business." And the town has added a section entitled "Other
Abuses or Misuses of Position," which includes criminal conviction,
discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and intentional physical harm
as ethical violations. That's a lot of territory for an ethics
commission to cover, and it leads to overlapping jurisdiction with other municipal,
state, and federal bodies.<br>
<br>
The new code even seems to imply that a violation of the town
charter is itself within the ethics commission's jurisdiction, or at
least this is how one member of the town's board of selectmen read it.<br>
<br>
One of the ethics commission's decisions did involve an alleged
violation of the charter: the hiring by the zoning board chair of a
lawyer to review decisions made by the board of zoning appeals. No
conflict appears to have been alleged, just conduct outside what is
allowed by the charter.<br>
<br>
The other ethics commission decision involved the state's Freedom of
Information Act.<br>
<br>
The town attorney appears to have handled the problem very well. "<span id="default"><span id="article">The issue really boils down to what
jurisdiction the Board of Ethics has," he said.<br>
<br>
With respect to the mention of the charter in the code's Declaration of
Policy, he said,</span></span> "That's broad language that
indicates what the town of Brookfield itself would desire and require
in one way or another. The code itself makes a distinction between
things that may be
violations of proper behavior [but may not rise to the level of being
violations of the Code of Ethics itself] ... The ethics board was
never, as far as I know, designed to be the overseer of all proper
practices in town government."<br>
<br>
One problem is that there is no clear way to deal with charter
violations. The town attorney said that they should be handled by the
board of selectmen, but what if the board itself violates the
charter?<br>
<br>
<span id="default"><span id="article">
<p>The town attorney said that if the charter violation
also involved a possible violation of the ethics code, then the ethics
commission could have jurisdiction, too. The First Selectman,
effectively the mayor, said that this was a very narrow distinction.
But to someone who knows what ethics codes are for, the space between
ethics code and charter violations couldn't be larger.<br>
</p>
<p>This is one of many reasons why ethics education is so important.</p>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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