The right pledge of ethics
A top City Council priority once a fifth member is seated after ballots are counted in Tuesday’s special election will be to renew, revise or replace a 35-year-old ethics code covering Yorba Linda’s elected and appointed leaders and all city employees.
According to a report from City Attorney Sonia Carvalho and her Best, Best & Krieger colleague Grover Trask, the City Clerk’s office turned up the apparently forgotten 1972 policy after the council asked city staff to develop ethics policy options.
The city’s third council adopted the four-page code setting “minimal ethical standards” by a unanimous vote, and it was signed by then-Mayor Rudy Castro on Dec. 18, 1972.
Carvalho and Trask recommend that council affirm the existing policy, adopt a model policy based on one developed in conjunction with Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics or give further direction on developing a different policy.
The 1972 policy includes conflict of interest descriptions already illegal or made illegal in later state legislation. The resolution calls for officials and employees to self-disclose conflicts and doesn’t contain mechanisms to enforce code provisions.
The Santa Clara policy is considered “value-based” rather than “rule-based” because it emphasizes what officials and employees should strive to do instead of what they are mandated by law to do, according to Carvalho and Trask.
The code’s preamble says officials, employees, volunteers and others who participate in city government “are required to subscribe to this code, understand how it applies to their specific responsibilities and practice its eight core values in their work.”
The values include individual pledges to be ethical, professional, service-oriented, fiscally responsible, organized, communicative, collaborative and progressive.
One “progressive” behavior is described as displaying “a style that maintains consistent standards, but is also sensitive to the need for compromise, ‘thinking outside the box’ and improving existing paradigms when necessary.”
The value-based approach sounds more like a list of personal goals and objectives than an old-fashioned code with teeth in the form of enforcement and consequences for misdeeds.
But there’s no harm in considering a policy that just might assist sound decision-making, encourage high conduct standards, increase public confidence in city leadership and link standards of integrity and values to daily operations as Carvalho and Trask indicate.
A FINAL NOTE
Richard Nixon Library and Museum director-designate Dr. Tim Naftali recently updated Town Center Blue Ribbon Committee members on future activities expected to increase the current estimated 100,000 annual attendance “by 50 percent very quickly.”
“Raise the wattage of the museum, and everybody benefits,” Naftali said, noting a non-partisan approach with new exhibits, interactive history, scholarly conferences and more evening events should attract a younger audience.
Of course, a new archive building on the west parking lot will increase parking and traffic pressures in the area, which the “blue-ribbon” body must consider in Old Town planning.
According to a report from City Attorney Sonia Carvalho and her Best, Best & Krieger colleague Grover Trask, the City Clerk’s office turned up the apparently forgotten 1972 policy after the council asked city staff to develop ethics policy options.
The city’s third council adopted the four-page code setting “minimal ethical standards” by a unanimous vote, and it was signed by then-Mayor Rudy Castro on Dec. 18, 1972.
Carvalho and Trask recommend that council affirm the existing policy, adopt a model policy based on one developed in conjunction with Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics or give further direction on developing a different policy.
The 1972 policy includes conflict of interest descriptions already illegal or made illegal in later state legislation. The resolution calls for officials and employees to self-disclose conflicts and doesn’t contain mechanisms to enforce code provisions.
The Santa Clara policy is considered “value-based” rather than “rule-based” because it emphasizes what officials and employees should strive to do instead of what they are mandated by law to do, according to Carvalho and Trask.
The code’s preamble says officials, employees, volunteers and others who participate in city government “are required to subscribe to this code, understand how it applies to their specific responsibilities and practice its eight core values in their work.”
The values include individual pledges to be ethical, professional, service-oriented, fiscally responsible, organized, communicative, collaborative and progressive.
One “progressive” behavior is described as displaying “a style that maintains consistent standards, but is also sensitive to the need for compromise, ‘thinking outside the box’ and improving existing paradigms when necessary.”
The value-based approach sounds more like a list of personal goals and objectives than an old-fashioned code with teeth in the form of enforcement and consequences for misdeeds.
But there’s no harm in considering a policy that just might assist sound decision-making, encourage high conduct standards, increase public confidence in city leadership and link standards of integrity and values to daily operations as Carvalho and Trask indicate.
A FINAL NOTE
Richard Nixon Library and Museum director-designate Dr. Tim Naftali recently updated Town Center Blue Ribbon Committee members on future activities expected to increase the current estimated 100,000 annual attendance “by 50 percent very quickly.”
“Raise the wattage of the museum, and everybody benefits,” Naftali said, noting a non-partisan approach with new exhibits, interactive history, scholarly conferences and more evening events should attract a younger audience.
Of course, a new archive building on the west parking lot will increase parking and traffic pressures in the area, which the “blue-ribbon” body must consider in Old Town planning.
posted by Jim Drummond at 12:00 PM
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