Shey has a question for the city's ethics board that relates to a job he left two years ago

If nothing else, it's possible that one thing almost might be true: Bankers will always find it swampy going if they make it on to the Cedar Rapids City Council.

That's been council member Pat Shey's experience.

Citizen Steve Hanken is now questioning Shey, an attorney and former Iowa state legislator, about his plans to vote on an important, upcoming City Council matter - where to put a new library.

Hanken first consulted City Hall's Web site, which notes that Shey is a bank officer with Cedar Rapids Bank & Trust Co. Based on that information, Hanken asked Shey not to vote on the upcoming library measure because the bank's board includes executives from both Gazette Communications - Chuck Peters - and TrueNorth - Loren Coppock.

Two possible sites for the new library are the locations of those two downtown businesses.

Shey has forwarded Hanken's concern on to the city's Board of Ethics, but Hanken on Monday said he's less concerned now that Shey has informed him that he stopped working for the bank in January 2008. Shey ought to update his biography on the city's Web page, Hanken says.

Shey now owns and operates a small construction company and a “green” insulation company with council member Tom Podzimek.

In his short note to the ethics board, Shey reports that, in fact, he stopped working for Cedar Rapids Bank & Trust Co. two years ago, though, “in the interest of full disclosure,” he adds that he has his personal and business bank accounts at the bank.

As an employee at the bank before 2008, Shey also asked the ethics board for advice on whether he should vote on city funding to help with the transformation of the former Osada building into the BottleWorks Lofts. A principal developer of the BottleWorks project, Fred Timko, also was on the board of Cedar Rapids Bank & Trust Co. On that issue, the ethics board advised Shey, then employed at the bank, not to vote on the BottleWorks matter. And Shey did not.

Before the creation of the city's ethics board in 2007, a citizen also questioned a vote by Shey, who was still at the bank, on a church expansion project because an executive at Cedar Rapids Bank & Trust Co. was a member of the church.