Board decides Cedar Rapids council members didn't violate ethics

Council members Tom Podzimek and Pat Shey didn't do anything wrong when their small construction firm contracted to work on a private renovation project that received City Council financial support.

In clearing the air for the two council members, the city's five-member Board of Ethics on Monday concluded that the city's 2-year-old ethics statute addresses “actual” conflicts of interest - of which there were none in this matter for Podzimek and Shey.

The city's ethics statute, the board said, does not take into consideration the less clear “appearances” of a conflict of interest.

Board members noted that Podzimek and Shey - Podzimek brought the matter to the board after a complaint - had recused themselves from a key 2008 council vote in which the City Council agreed to provide substantial incentives to developer/builder Fred Timko. Timko is converting what had been the Osada affordable housing project into The BottleWorks loft condominiums at 905 Third St. SE.

Board member Susan O'Connor captured the ethics board's sentiment on Monday when she called Cedar Rapids a small town where community leaders and city officials have an assortment of interconnections. A too-strict interpretation of conflict of interest rules could limit who runs for elective office or who sits on city boards and commissions, which would do the city “a great disservice,” O'Connor said.

Board member Bill Quinby said he wasn't sure that City Council members should be working for someone who got a “pretty big sum of money,” even if the council members opted not to vote on the matter themselves. The other board members didn't see it that way.

Instead, the ethics board also said a council member can discuss and vote on a project and then subsequently work on it if at the time of the discussion and vote the council member did not know he or she would get some business out of it.

No one can know the future and what work it might bring, O'Connor said.

However, Quinby seemed to suggest that the ethics board was assuming there have never been “secret deals” anywhere where an elected official votes for something and later makes income off it.

“It gets back to that appearance issue,” Quinby said.

In a written answer to inquiries from the ethics board, Podzimek and Shey noted that they, as well as council members Monica Vernon and Kris Gulick, own small businesses and might have chances to work on projects that they earlier had voted on not knowing it later would bring them work. Are we “forbidden” to accept such work “if we are a successful low bidder?” Podzimek and Shey asked.

Some on the ethics panel noted that Podzimek and Shey said they had to bid on work for the BottleWorks project, but such private bidding is not publicly verifiable. Quinby asked longtime City Attorney Jim Flitz if he could recall anyone raising conflict-of-interest issues, and Flitz recalled some questions in Dubuque a few years ago when the Dubuque mayor at the time took on real estate work for a controversial development that had been approved by the City Council there

Judi Whetstine, the board's chairwoman, noted that the ethics board decided at its inception two years ago that the word “appearance” should not be in the city's initial conflict-of-interest language because it can be “very subjective.” The board didn't express much interest Monday in revisiting the issue.

An interesting aside: Timko, president/CEO of Point Builders Inc., was a member of the city's Home Rule Charter Commission in 2005, and in that role, Timko pushed strongly to create a local ethics board as part of the city's new charter.

Whetstine is community advocate for The Gazette.