Borough ethics battle goes on

PALMER — It’s not altogether clear how it’s all going to shake out, but the Mat-Su Borough Assembly has decided to postpone making a decision on a re-write of its ethics codes.

The current ethics code was written in 1984 and has been amended over the years. The borough has an ethics board that oversees ethics complaints. The board also is tasked with periodically revising the code, which it has been in the process of doing for a number of years now.

The board’s set of changes was put before the assembly Tuesday, but so was an ordinance the borough attorney drew up.

Jim Sykes, who helped draw up those changes, testified that he feels the attorney’s idea of eliminating the ethics board and replacing it with an attorney to investigate and rule on complaints is a bad idea. He likens it to a prosecutor in a criminal trial also playing the role of judge.

“I think there’s an inherent conflict,” he said.

Bob Vroman, who has also worked on the codes, said he felt well-represented by the volunteer board.

“Stick to your volunteers,” he said. “They will ask no more of you than they ask of themselves.”

Many who testified mentioned that drastic changes to the code only came about when some very expensive cases landed before the board. People who were the subject of those complaints felt poorly treated.

Assemblyman Jim Colver was one of those people. Colver was exonerated in a 2006 case that alleged he’d used his position as an assemblyman to leverage contracts. But he’s made no bones about how poorly he felt he was treated.

“When I went through this process several years ago — no due process whatsoever,” Colver said when the issue came up at an assembly meeting in June. “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.”

Probable cause is a legal term; in order for a criminal trial to proceed, someone has to determine if there’s enough evidence a crime was committed. The same is true with ethics — someone can make an accusation, but for the board to proceed there has to be actual evidence that something is amiss.

Sykes agrees on that point, calling that probable cause issue the “crux of the problem.”

The old code didn’t define the term “probable cause.” The version the ethics board put forward does and sets up steps for how to determine whether probable cause exists.

In the end, assembly members put off voting on the measure until Oct. 11.

But before they did, they changed a few things. They instituted a raft of changes to the ethics board’s ordinance suggested by the borough attorney and then tweaked dollar amounts for things like gifts someone can receive without reporting them and what constitutes a “substantial financial interest” for purposes of determining whether someone is too tied in with an individual or business to be fair in a hearing.

The biggest fight at Tuesday’s meeting was over whether to take Sykes’ suggestion to create a volunteer pool of pro-bono attorneys to help the borough with ethics complaints.

“I just don’t know that there are handfuls of attorneys out there who are willing to step up and put their credentials on the line for free for something as serious as an ethics complaint,” Assemblyman Ron Arvin said.

But Warren Keogh, who moved to accept Sykes’ recommendation, noted that attorney fees run to $150 an hour. Having some free ones on hand could save the borough lots of money.

The assembly opt not to create that pool of attorneys.

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