Cedar Rapids council approves change in ethics ordinance

On a 7-2 vote, the City Council Tuesday night agreed to amend the city's ethics ordinance to require council members, certain city officials and members of boards and commissions to file financial disclosure forms and keep them current.

The intent of the form is to make public the financial relationships that city officials and their immediate families have with companies and entities that do business with the city.

City officials must recuse themselves in cases of conflict of interest, and the ordinance amendment notes that such recusal is "an absolute lack of involvement." That means that officials with a conflict should not vote, discuss, deliberate or otherwise participate in a matter under discussion or being acted on.

In fact, Judi Whetstine, the chairwoman of the city's Board of Ethics, told the council that the amendment's expectation is that council members and city officials with a conflict of interest leave any discussion of a matter that has come or is coming before City Hall even in a private setting where the matter comes up.

The city's ethics ordinance - Cedar Rapids is the only Iowa city with a local Board of Ethics - is limited, as is the state of Iowa's law in that it applies only to direct conflicts of interest.

However, the amendments to the city ordinance alert city officials to "the appearance" of a conflict of interest in matters involving the city's receipt of federal funds. Federal regulations require the reporting of actual conflicts of interest as well as "any appearance" of a conflict of interest.

City Council member Scott Olson, a Realtor with Skogman Commercial, asked the council Tuesday night to defer action on the new ethics amendments so there could be additional work done to define "indirect economic benefit" and to provide some assurance that a council member would not face repercussions if a council member acted on city business not knowing that it involved a client.

Olson said he has over 200 clients and he said it was impossible to know, for instance, when voting to approve the thousands of regular city bill payments if one of his clients has been a vendor that week for the city.

"Maybe I'm a little paranoid," Olson said. He said his goal when he ran for the council in 2011 was to prove people wrong and to show that a council member could be a business person and not be in front of the ethics panel repeatedly.

Whetstine noted that the language of "indirect economic benefit" has been in the city's ethics ordinance since it was first adopted in 2007.

Council member Pat Shey encouraged the council to act on the ethics amendments now, saying it could take weeks trying to seek new and still imperfect definitions.

Shey noted that the amendments really create a stiffer standard for city projects with federal dollars attached to them, adding that definitions of "appearances" of conflicts can vary.

Whetstine noted that the city's Board of Ethics decided early on not to include appearances of conflict in the city ordinance because the board majority thought such a standard was too subjective.

Back in 2009, Bill Quinby, then an ethics board member, suggested that the board try to find a way to include some language about appearances of conflict. The issue at the time involved a contractor on the council who intended to do work on a local project after it received economic incentives from the council. Quinby didn't think it would look right to the public for a council member to get business from someone getting city help. The board's majority disagreed.

Council member Don Karr joined Olson in voting against the ethics amendments as written.