Ethics: When in doubt, don’t

When it comes to the Mat-Su Borough’s newly revamped ethics ordinance, perhaps Assemblyman Ron Arvin said it best: “If you’re corrupt, you’re going to be corrupt for $10, you’re going to be corrupt for $1,000.”

Perhaps that’s the best way to look at the new changes. Whatever the rules say, the elected officials and borough staff they apply to have to be counted on to follow them. As for the substance of those changes, the jury’s still out.

On one hand, it seems appropriate to include a fact-finding case officer in the equation. In the criminal justice system in Alaska, the analogous process is the grand jury, which takes an initial look at the evidence prosecutors have and determines if it’s enough for the case to go to trial.

The old adage is that a prosecutor worth his salt should be able to indict a ham sandwich at the grand jury level. That said, we have seen grand juries fail to indict. There’s a reason we retain that process, and it’s to make sure frivolous complaints or arrests don’t make it far enough to irreparably and unnecessarily damage a person’s reputation.

The danger with the borough’s new system is that it has ethics complaints first reviewed by a hearing officer before proceeding to the ethics board. It seems a weakness that the process relies on the opinion of a single hearing officer — however well educated.

Our hope is that these changes are improvements on the old system. But we will be watching with interest how this plays out the first time the borough gets a test case for its new rules. We promise to add our voices to those calling for reform if the new rules fail to serve the public good.

So what about the other significant change, the $1,000 line in the sand for when an official, elected or otherwise, has to declare a conflict of interest?

Honestly, we think the borough assembly set for itself something of an impossible task when it decided to put a dollar amount on financial conflicts of interest. Certainly there are people in this borough that don’t view $999 as a lot of money and who wouldn’t let such a sum influence their vote.

There also are many who would sell out for that amount or less. Not to dredge up old news, but former state lawmaker Vic Kohring, at least in that infamous video in the Baranof Hotel, accepted a much smaller amount. Here we find ourselves circling back to the idea that regardless of the dollar amount, a person knows when he or she is conflicted. When in doubt, we suggest the ethics rule of thumb CH2M Hill includes in its employee handbook.

To paraphrase, the handbook instructs employees not to do anything they wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the newspaper.

Arvin and Assemblyman Jim Colver told us if this new set of ethics rules fails, they’ll push to revisit the issue. We’ll hold them to that.