Ethics

Question: Are there any ethical issues associated with a local official traveling to a conference and then missing some or nearly all of the sessions? If we suspect a colleague is doing this, what should we say or do?

Answer: The issue you raise is a proper-use-of-public-resources issue because the city presumably is paying for its officials to travel to and register for the conference. The threshold question to ponder in any use-of-public-resources issue is whether the city receives a public benefit from the use of a particular resource.

Cities send their elected officials and staff to conferences so that city officials will learn from the conference sessions and other conference attendees. This information can then help city officials better serve their communities.

Furthermore, many conferences are, in fact, annual membership meetings of the sponsoring organization. Attending the conference lets your city’s perspective be heard and reflected in the organization’s policies and positions.

These are all bona fide public benefits for the city and the community and, hence, an ethical and legal use of public resources.

Issues to Ponder

The issue to ponder is whether your colleague’s attendance at the conference is affording your city meaningful public benefits. Attending the conference sessions is, of course, a key way to achieve those benefits, but there are other ways to benefit from conference attendance.

For example, is your colleague connecting with fellow city officials and exchanging substantive information in other ways at the conference? Sometimes these conversations can be just as valuable as the conference sessions, particularly if there is a balance between such networking and attending the more formal sessions. The question to ask is: Are these conversations a meaningful exchange of substantive information or merely “schmoozing”?

Leadership Considerations

Another factor to consider is whether your colleague holds a leadership role in the organization. Sometimes the business and policy-making aspects of conferences are such that it is not possible to attend all of the conference sessions. Yet in helping shape the overall direction and policies of the organization with your city’s interests in mind, your colleague is nonetheless performing a service to both your city and other members of the organization.

If the conference is in Sacramento (or another state capital city) or Washington, D.C., your colleague may be meeting with state and federal officials to build relationships and acquaint those officials with your city’s challenges and concerns. Associations often schedule their conferences in these venues just so this kind of activity can occur. What’s more, having local officials show up in force during the same week can be a powerful reminder to state and federal officials of the importance of local issues.

It can be useful for officials attending such conferences to let their colleagues on the council know that this type of lobbying will be one of the aspects of the conference, so the official can make sure he or she is articulating the city’s concerns as a whole. Because these meetings sometimes occur during a meal, it can be important, legally, for the city to have a policy explaining under what circumstances city officials may be reimbursed for “hosting” the meal expenses of others.

This issue was explained in the February 2003 edition of this column, “No Such Thing as a Free Lunch?” (available online at www.westerncity.com) and is addressed in the Institute for Local Self Government (ILSG) sample reimbursement policy, available from the ILSG Ethics Resource Center at www.ilsg.org/trust.

Perhaps the reason your colleague is missing from a conference session is that the councilmember simply needed to attend to a work-related telephone call or issue. In that situation, the councilmember trying to balance work and council duties needs to assess whether he or she is able to get enough out of the conference to justify the cost to the agency.

Of course, the worst-case scenario—which is extremely rare—is that your colleague is using the trip mainly or solely as an opportunity to vacation and sightsee. This is both unethical and arguably illegal as a personal use of public resources. The ethical and legal issues of the personal use of public resources is extensively explored in ILSG’s new guide Of Cookie Jars and Fishbowls: A Public Officials Guide to the Use of Public Resources. The guide recommends that agencies adopt an expenditure policy and offers a sample policy as an example.

Conferences as a “Perk”?

If your colleague appears to be “vacationing,” perhaps he or she views agency-paid travel in particular and access to public resources in general as a perk of office. The legal problem with this view is that the law sets specific limits on elected officials’ compensation; these limits do not allow additional perks, even though the level of compensation provided for most public offices is not enough to compensate for the time involved.

Again the issue gets back to the benefits to the city and the public of having well-informed elected officials. The city is spending the money to send its officials to conferences to achieve these benefits. Not attending a conference paid for and traveled to at agency expense deprives the city and the community of that benefit—certainly an ethical issue. Some have suggested that an official who went to a conference and didn’t meaningfully attend the sessions could have been derelict in his or her duty to the city.

What if a particular city official has already announced his or her retirement or resignation? In this case, wouldn’t it be difficult, if not impossible, for the city official to apply the lessons learned at the conference to the city’s policy-making process? Again, there may be additional benefits to the city from the official attending a conference, particularly if the official will be representing the city’s interests on a committee or other decision-making body at the conference. And, if the official will be continuing to represent the city in another governmental capacity (for example, on the board of supervisors or in the legislature), there can be sufficient benefits flowing back to the city from having this official be informed on issues of concern to the city.

Again, the key issue to analyze is how such conference attendance will benefit the city. If the city official is retiring from public service, those benefits may be more difficult to identify.

The Junket Issue

Public service is a unique undertaking in a democratic society. The public’s trust that taxpayer dollars are being put to their best use in service to the community is vitally important, particularly in these times of strained budgets. This issue is a matter of both good ethics and good politics. The public must always be assured that local officials attending conferences are doing so as an extension of their public service to the community—not as a personal benefit.

This is particularly challenging when some elements of the media and public are already inclined to dismiss the value of conference attendance for public officials. This is a great disservice to the public, as the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter noted when he observed that: “. . . without . . . highly trained, imaginative, and courageously disinterested public officials, the democratic aim of our society cannot be achieved. Such a body of public officials is indispensable no matter what social and economic policies may express the popular will . . . .”

If indeed your colleague is treating the opportunity to travel to a conference at public expense as a junket, it gives credence to those in the media who argue that the public receives no benefit from such conference attendance.

So there is both a short-term and long-term cost when someone abuses conference privileges. When an official doesn’t receive the full benefit of conference attendance, the official misses out on the opportunity to be a more knowledgeable and informed public servant—which ultimately costs the city in two ways: the loss of knowledge and the cost of attendance. In addition, the AWOL city official is making it more difficult for his or her colleagues to take advantage of educational opportunities in the future.

Your colleague may also be thinking: Who’s going to know? The road to many an ethical embarrassment is paved with just such an attitude.

What to Do?

First, find out what the situation is from your colleague in a private conversation. There may be a perfectly good—and ethical—explanation for why he or she missed one or more conference sessions.

ILSG’s sample expenditure policy also has a provision that might help answer the “What should we do?” question. It suggests that local agencies include in their policies a requirement that local officials give a brief report to the council on the conferences that they attend. Not only does such a report leverage the benefits of attending conferences by having attendees share what they learned with their colleagues, it also imposes a degree of accountability for attending the sessions.

The city of Pismo Beach, California, uses this approach, and Councilmember Rudy Natoli notes that it helps demonstrate to the public the benefits of investing in conference attendance. ILSG Immediate Past President and former Santa Ana Mayor Jerry Patterson observes that such reports have a self-enforcing aspect because the public and fellow councilmembers will notice if a report is vague or not meaningful. A private conversation with the individual may also clarify the city’s expectation that conference attendance will, in fact, involve conference attendance.

This is a more measured and constructive approach than publicly “blowing the whistle” on what you consider to be improper conduct. Such accusations tend to reinforce the media’s and the public’s perceptions that conferences are really junkets and have no place in the city budget.

Furthermore, using ethics to publicly embarrass a colleague also undermines the overall goal of fostering a genuine culture of ethics in the city—a culture that should include the ethical values of respect and civility. A confrontational approach will not foster a positive working relationship with your colleague.

It also is arguably an instance of vigilante ethics—or the unethical use of ethics that actually damages public confidence and gives ethics a bad name. The perception (and reality) that councilmembers are able to work together to address the community’s challenges and concerns is an important part of the public’s confidence in the city and its officials’ leadership abilities.

Adapted with permission from the April 2004 issue of Western City magazine, the monthly publication of the League of California Cities, Sacramento, California. For more information, visit the Web site at www.westerncity.com.
This column is one of a series of bimonthly columns made available to local officials in Western City magazine by the Institute for Local Self Government (ILSG). The “Everyday Ethics for Local Officials” column is part of ILSG’s Public Confidence Project. It is a joint effort of the members of the Institute’s advisory panel on ethics.
ILSG is the nonprofit research arm of the League of California Cities. For more information about the Institute’s ethics resources available for local officials, visit the Web site at www.ilsg.org.