Ethics in the Mat-Su Borough tested

To the editor:

Now that they’ve dabbled in it, at their last special meeting the Mat-Su Borough Assembly voted to return Ordinance 11-022 to the ethics board for further rewrite, then for another assembly vote in mid-January.

This provides a chance to ditch antiquated and complicated prohibition language for high standards and meaningful compliance and penalties.

The clerk’s office already adheres to lofty professional and personal standards; why should we expect less of the assembly, the mayor, boards/commissions and other administrative staff?

Ignorant or enlightened, we live our ethics every day in how we treat our neighbors, how we spend our money and in whom we elect to public office and what we allow them to do on our behalf. Isn’t it incumbent on us as responsible residents to become familiar with our existing borough ethics code and contemporary model language, and to actively mold the Valley’s code through the ethics board and then support it before our elected representatives in the assembly? Read the model ethics code at CityEthics.org and the certified municipal clerk code at the website of the International Institute of Municipal Clerks. Then, discuss variations and implications at the dinner table and over the backyard fence.

This is a powerful opportunity, not to mention a juicy one, to impact our borough government’s ethical profile. The ethics board should shortly be scheduling work sessions and public hearings. If we take the initiative to participate, we can indeed create the government we say we want and think we deserve. This is all about us, about votes and vetoes, and about holding our elected representatives accountable to high standards of public service for all our greater good. Ethics is a cornerstone and a measuring stick of good government.

This is an open invitation to borough residents to go for the gold. If we can be the patented fly-fishing capital of Alaska, we are the only thing holding us back from being the patented ethics capital of Alaska — but there’s no reason we can’t be that, too.

Visit the above-mentioned websites at: cityethics.org/content/full-text-model-ethics-code and iimc.com/DocumentView.aspx?DID=55.

Patty Rosnel

South Knik River