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by Melissa Bailey | May 31, 2006 8:35 am

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Posted to: City Hall

Would new ethics rules proposed by Alderman Jorge Perez (pictured at right) bring the city up to par with the state in the wake of the Rowland corruption scandals? Or would they be a “straitjacket” preventing aldermen from conducting business as usual?

Perez’s proposal, submitted in December, came up at a joint aldermanic Legislative Committee and Aldermanic Affairs committee meeting Tuesday evening.

Perez proposes expanding the city’s code of ethics to include: no more ducking ethics forms, no campaigning using city resources, and no gifts to aldermen over $50 if you have city business before the board. Ethics complaints are currently heard by a three-person Board of Ethics. Perez would expand that board to five members.

Perez also suggests a list of penalties, ranging from a letter of reprimand to a $99 fine to dismissal from the Board of Aldermen. As he went through his seven-page proposal, aldermen jumped in with cautious replies.

Perez would bar city officals from campaign shakedowns —‚Äù using “city resources to solicit any political contribution.” “Nor shall any such person solicit political contributions while performing their official duties or conducting official business for the City of New Haven.”

That means aldermen couldn’t pass out invitations to campaign fundraisers inside City Hall. “So you can’t just go up to someone [in aldermanic chambers] and hand them an invitation like we’ve been doing?” Asked Alderwoman Bitsie Clark.

Yes, that’s right, said Perez —‚Äù only outside the building.

“Isn’t that what that woman did?” asked one alder, referring to Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s chief of staff, Lisa Moody. (Moody allegedly went a step further, asking directors to pass out political solicitations). You can’t do that either, said Perez.

How about getting paid to give a speech as an alderman? No, said Perez.

Social Oil

What about receiving food and drink —‚Äù Is that a gift? Yes. Under Perez’s proposal, no entity seeking to do business with the city can give gifts of over $50 per alderman in one year.

Alders in the room feared barring gifts like food would halt business.

Alderman Yusuf I. Shah said he didn’t want to have to stop seeing constituents “for fear of some watchdog committee running me down in my ward because I sat down and had tea or coffee with someone in my neighborhood who wants to open a daycare.”

“It would take a lot of coffee and hot dogs to get to that $50,” assured Perez.

Clark had reservations, too. “We have seen our governor abuse these ethical things on a grand scale,” so the ethics code “seems like a wonderful thing.” “But you can take it so far so that it interferes with the social oil that makes things work.”

What about when the Chamber of Commerce invites the Board of Aldermen for a lunch to talk about economic development? They’re trying to influence us, Clark said. But “that is part of the way human beings talk to each other.” Those discussions wouldn’t happen in a barren, foodless office.

Clark said she didn’t want the ethics code to “put us in such a straitjacket that we can’t” have lunch with the Knights of Columbus, or breakfast with the Long Wharf Theater, without getting slapped with an ethics fine.

Fair enough, said Perez. He suggested an exemption allowing food and beverages at board-wide events, like when Yale-New Haven Hospital meets with the board for a briefing. If the whole board is there, the food seems like less of a vote-buying tactic, and more just innocuous “social oil.”

Disclosure

What about those pesky ethics disclosure forms that require city employees to divulge who their family members work for, i.e. where their other interests lie? There was a “particular consultant who doesn’t file a disclosure form” because city law didn’t require consultants to do so. Perez would make sure the forms are required. And that people actually file them —‚Äù in his research, he found some aldermen hadn’t filed a form despite four written reminders. Those people, like soon-to-be former city Budget Director Frank Altieri, would be forced to file a form or face a penalty.

Perez didn’t specify which penalty would go with which offense. The ethics board would decide that. Someone who steals money could be removed from the board, but “someone who forgets to fill out a form —‚Äù like that ethics disclosure form —‚Äù I don’t think they should be removed for that.”

Despite concerns, alders seemed favorable to some kind of ethics code update. Aldermanic President Carl Goldfield and Alderwoman Joyce Chen wanted to make sure the new rules would be enforced by a third party like the Board of Ethics, not by an aldermanic committee, as Perez suggested at one point.

Mayoral Deputy Chief of Staff Rob Smuts sat “chomping at the bit” to deliver the mayor’s opinion, but time ran out before he could talk. He said the mayor’s office has “a lot of issues” with how the proposal would work —‚Äù in some cases, language borrowed from state code, such as barring “lobbyists,” doesn’t make sense on a citywide level.

Smuts will wait to speak his mind when the matter is taken up at the next joint committee meeting in about a month.

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