Ethicist Comments on Concord Complaints

The director of a nonprofit in Florida that analyzes and shares information about local government ethics programs in the United States has offered a number of comments about the current against two of Concord’s elected officials.

Robert Wechsler, the director of research for City Ethics, posted comments and suggestions on the orgs’s website last week, based on a story published on about a complaint filed against at-large City Councilor . He stated that in his opinion, there could be conflicts of interest in the case that warranted a re-examination of the entire situation, including how the was created.

“An ethics program is all about dealing responsibly with conflicts,” he wrote. “In creating the Concord ethics program, the council dealt irresponsibly with its own conflicts and with the city manager's conflict. It did not require any of its members to withdraw from participating in the selection and approval process, or in a final decision involving one of its members.”

Wechsler said Mayor Jim Bouley and City Manager nominating the members of the placed a “huge conflict right at the center of the city’s conflict of interest program. It effectively ordained that any conflict involving the council is perfectly okay.”

Instead, Wechsler advised that the city should have allowed civic organizations in the community to nominate the members of the Board of Ethics, such as the League of Women Voters, a local commerce or business group, or a bar association. Cities like Atlanta, Houston, Milwaukee, Santa Fe, and a number of counties in Florida have used this process as an alternative to having public officials nominate members who could later be investigated by the board members they nominated.

Last week, the Concord City Council held a re-vote of the nomination of the members of the Board of Ethics, after Rep. , D-Concord, filed a , this time, against St. Hilaire, for not abstaining from the vote of the nominations. Bouley abstained from voting on his own nominations but voted on the consent agenda for Aspell’s. In the re-vote, both Bouley and St. Hilaire abstained from voting on both sets of nominations, attempting to correct the matter. The city council approved the nominations, again, unanimously.

But Wechsler said the action of abstaining doesn’t correct the matter, in his mind.

“It does not matter whether or not the mayor or the council member abstained,” he wrote. “Withdrawal in this situation is not only insufficient to correct the conflict situation, it also effectively violates the ordinance that created the city's ethics program.”

The Board of Ethics is scheduled to hold its first meeting at noon on Monday, June 4.