Assembly delays ethics ordinance until August

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Assembly’s first run at big changes to the borough’s ethics rules drew a crowd this past week, but in the end the body kicked the issue down the road to the end of summer.

The ordinance change would have done a number of things that people who testified took issue with.

“I think having five members of the public serve to hear complaints filed by members of the public is a good concept,” said Frank Muncy, a member of the borough’s ethics board, who spoke as an individual about the current way the borough handles ethics concerns.

Muncy noted that the change to this process contemplated in the ordinance would be costly, since it would entail hiring an attorney to vet and investigate complaints.

“Compensation for that attorney is probably $150 an hour. People who volunteer their time do not charge you anything,” Muncy said.

Bob Vroman, a former borough assemblyman who has worked on ethics codes in the past, objected to upping the amount of money a person could accept from an entity without declaring a conflict of interest from $50 to $5,000. The $50 rule, he said, makes it so a person can sit down for lunch with someone else.

“In the process of formulating the code we recognize that there are temptations from time to time,” Vroman said. “However, you can’t be of such a frame of mind that the fellow that takes you out to lunch and buys you lunch is going to take your soul as well.”

A third complaint dealt with a change that would up the fees associated with filing an ethics complaint.

The assembly, though, said it likes a number of the changes and doesn’t want to throw the whole ordinance out.

Assemblyman Mark Ewing, for instance, noted that upping the fees paid for filing complaints makes the filer accountable.

Assemblyman Jim Colver spoke about the ordinance from experience, having lived down an ethics complaint during a previous stint on the assembly.

In 2006, a case surrounding his alleged use of his position as an assemblyman to leverage contracts cropped up. The case was eventually dismissed, essentially exonerating him. But the process was a tough one.

“When I went through this process several years ago — no due process whatsoever,” Colver said, explaining that the borough told him nothing of the charges or even how he would go about fighting them.

“The main problem that you have with this code is that every and any complaint goes forward because there is nobody with legal training to vet out whether a complaint has probable cause,” he said.

Hence, he said, he liked the idea of adding a contracted attorney.

The resolution putting the ordinance forward noted that the previous two ethics complaints cost the borough more than $200,000 combined.

Muncy actually addressed that in his comments, saying usually the board uses in-house borough attorneys, but in that case had to hire a contractor.

“It was a fluke. There was only a cost because the borough attorneys said that there was a conflict in them assisting us in any way,” Muncy said.

The assembly eventually decided to postpone the matter until Aug. 16, at which point it will also take up changes proposed by the ethics board itself, changes the board has been working on for some time. The idea is to find a way to combine the two.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.