Lessons from Mistakes Made in a Connecticut City
Assuming you can learn a lot from the mistakes made in local government
ethics matters in cities and towns other than your own, there is a
great deal to learn from a simple ethics matter that, through a number
of mistakes, oversights and, apparently, partisanship has been turned
into a big issue in the city of <a href="http://www.torringtonct.org" target="”_blank”">Torrington</a>
(CT; pop. 36,000). There's also a lesson to be learned about the
confidentiality of ethics commission decisions.<br>
<br>
<b>The Need for Regular Ethics Commission Meetings</b><br>
The first mistake is to have an ethics board that does not meet
regularly and whose minutes are not made public. This has resulted in
confusion about what happened at a February 2009 meeting. It has also resulted in the
failure of the board to fulfill its promise to recommend clarifying the
conflict of interest provision in the city charter, because it only met
once in the year since it made its promise.<br>
<br>
<b>The Clarity of a Conflict of Interest Provision</b><br>
In February 2009, the board dismissed a complaint regarding two council
members who voted on a teachers contract when they had spouses who were
teachers in the city's schools. The ethics board members don't appear to be
sure why they did this, but it seems as if they felt the conflict of
interest provision was insufficiently clear (see a <a href="http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2010/01/12/news/local/460317.txt" target="”_blank”"><i>Republican-American</i>
article</a> for more about this dismissal).<br>
<br>
Often, conflict of interest provisions are insufficiently clear, and
responsible for messes like this one. But not here. I
think Torrington's provision is very clear. See for yourself:<br>
<ul>
Any elected or appointed officer or any employee, and
any member of any board, commission or agency of the City, who has a
personal and/or financial interest, direct or indirect, in any
contract, transaction or decision to which the City or any board,
commission or agency of the City is a party shall disclose that
interest to the Board of Councilmen or any other City board, commission
or agency of which he or she is a member, which bodies shall record
such disclosure upon the official record of their meetings. No person
shall vote as a member of any City board, commission or agency on any
question involving his or her said interest. <br>
</ul>
And here is the definition, in the ethics code, of
"financial interest":<br>
<ul>
Financial Interest. Any interest in which an individual derives or
expects that he will
derive economic and/or pecuniary gain or loss to himself, to any member
of his immediate family or to any organization to which said individual
is affiliated as an employee, owner, partner or member of a governing
board or from which said individual will receive or expects to receive
a gift.<br>
</ul>
I don't see how this language could be clarified, or how anyone would
think it does not apply to voting on a spouse's labor contract. But
after one of the council members voted on another matter in December 2009 involving his
wife's labor contract, he said, according to <a href="http://rep-am.com/news/local/459946.txt" target="”_blank”">an article in the
<i>Republican-American</i></a>, that his vote on the contract "'does not
directly impact my wife'
because it does not guarantee her employment. 'So, where's the problem?
I'm voting what is for the benefit of the city not an individual.'"<br>
<br>
<b>Conflict of Interest Protections Work Both Ways</b><br>
It's sad to hear a public official say that a labor contract that sets
his wife's pay does not impact her. In fact, according to the
<i>Republican-American</i> article, he voted against the contract, even though
it meant a raise for his wife. That seems to exonerate him. But
conflicts are not offset by voting against your interest. As an
official, you are not expected to choose between your interests, but
rather to withdraw from the matter altogether. Conflict laws also
protect officials from having to vote, say, against a brother's
hiring or a sister's contract if they believe they are not in the
public interest.<br>
<br>
<b>The Confidentiality of Ethics Commission Decisions</b><br>
According to <a href="http://www.registercitizen.com/articles/2010/01/17/news/doc4b529da866a6…; target="”_blank”">an
article in yesterday's <i>Register-Citizen</i></a>, the two council
member whose spouses are teachers (the other council member abstained from the December 2009 vote)
are demanding the resignation of the ethics board's chair, because the
chair disclosed the fact that the board had dismissed the February 2009
complaint. Confidentiality is required by state law (up until a finding
of probable cause). The two council members also mistakenly cite a
Torrington ethics rule regarding the use of confidential information
for someone's benefit.<br>
<br>
It does appear that the chair violated the state confidentiality law,
but this leads to two questions. First, is this confidentiality rule in
the public interest? The council member who voted on his wife's labor
contract in December 2009 (for which a complaint was filed, once again)
appears to have depended on the 2009 ethics board dismissal. But was it right for
him to keep this dismissal secret from other council and board members,
who would have otherwise received the benefit of its guidance, as wrong-headed as it was?
And should the council member have been able to use the dismissal in
his defense if it was his desire that it remain confidential? You can't
have it both ways.<br>
<br>
I think it's in the public interest that officials know the result of ethics board proceedings, so that they can learn from them. It's also best that the public know.<br>
<br>
The second question raised by the ethics board chair's apparent
violation of the
state confidentiality law is, what should be the consequences? Who was
harmed and to what extent?<br>
<br>
The council member feels that disclosure of the complaint against him
and his colleague tarnished their image. But it's hard to see how
dismissal of a complaint could hurt someone's image. In fact, it shows
that they did nothing wrong and, in this case, that the problem was
with the law, not with them. And if the complaint had not been
dismissed, then it would have become public pursuant to state law.<br>
<br>
And yet the council member is calling for the chair to go. This seems
harsh. It's likely that, with so few meetings and the usual lack of
ethics training for ethics commission members, the chair had no idea
that his board's dismissals are supposed to kept confidential. He does
know that you don't talk about current, in-process complaints, which
could arguably harm an official's reputation (as could true or false
allegations made in newspapers, blogs, and public meetings, which are
legal). But mentioning a past dismissal would seem only to help the
official's reputation. There seems to be no malice involved, or selfish
interests at all.<br>
<br>
And yet the council members are filing a complaint with the state
attorney general. Could the fact that the chair is a member of the
opposite party be an issue here?<br>
<br>
I've written a few times about the confidentiality of ethics
proceedings. I feel that transparency and guidance are very important
in this instance, and that harm to reputation is greater from
non-official, perfectly legal allegations. See <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/many-problems-ethics-proceeding-confi…; target="”_blank”">my
most recent blog post</a> on this topic for more on this.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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