Borough adopts ethics changes

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Assembly has approved significant changes to borough ethics rules.

Assemblyman Ron Arvin described the changes, passed by a 6-1 vote last week, as adding specificity and due process to the codes.

On the specificity front, he said the assembly put a firm dollar amount on what constitutes a significant financial interest for consideration in potential ethics conflicts. Financial interest relates to companies or people with business before the assembly or borough staff. If an employee or official has more than a $1,000 stake in the decision at hand or has received that much from one of those companies or people, he or she has to declare a potential conflict of interest.

Assemblyman Jim Colver said that for employees, a supervisor would determine if that employee needs to sit out the decision. For the assembly, the borough mayor would make that ruling.

Arvin said the code previously simply stated “significant financial interests” had to be disclosed, and without a baseline figure was just too vague.

“What is insubstantial financial interest versus substantial financial interest is different among every single person in our society,” Arvin said. “What means a lot to one person might not mean a lot to another.”

The other major change has to do with how the borough handles ethics complaints. The process was to put them before an ethics board made up of residents. The new process appoints a hearing officer from a pool of experts to first determine if the complaint has merit. In legal terms, the officer will determine probable cause. If there’s probable cause, it then goes to the ethics board.

“I don’t think we had a due process determination in the past, and the way it had been done in the past the borough would go out and hire a bunch of attorneys,” Colver said.

Both he and Arvin pointed out that both of the borough’s most recent ethics complaints resulted in more than $100,000 in legal costs.

“It was a rather formal process with a high cost to actually get to the nuts and bolts of whether or not there was any compelling evidence of violation of the code,” Colver said.

The lone dissenting voice on the assembly was Warren Keogh. Attempts to reach Keogh for comment Monday about his position on the new ethics code were not successful.

There had been talk of doing away with the ethics board altogether. Colver described the new set-up as a compromise.

He said the ethics board will have 15 members and that the first five contacted with enough time available to hear the case will participate.

Arvin said he’s happy, at least for now, with what the assembly came up with.

“What we have today is much better than what was on the books,” he said. “It puts parameters where people can understand what’s expected of them, removes subjectivity with regards to a complaint, and if it needs revision the body will take it back up.”

Colver, who speaks from experience having been on the business end of an ethics complaint for which he was eventually exonerated, agrees the rules seem better than the old ones, but said time will tell if they truly are.

“We’ll have to test drive this one, see how it works,” he said.

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

Should the borough use appointed hearing officers to sortthrough ethics complaints and set a $1,000 limit on financialdisclosure?

Ron Arvin: Yes

Steve Colligan: Yes

Jim Colver: Yes

Vern Halter: Yes

Warren Keogh: No

Darcie Salmon: Yes

Noel Woods: Yes