The City of Rye Board of Ethics has been in the news a lot lately. Regardless of the details of the matter at hand, it’s important to understand that the Board did exactly what it is designed to do in rendering its opinion, and it served its purpose as a benefit to all of us to ensure public trust in our government.
Officers of the City, defined as employees, elected officials, and commission members, hold great power in the governing of a municipality. As a result, the guiding legislation is New York State Article 18 (Conflicts of Interest of Municipal Officers and Employees) that establishes codes of ethics such as Rye’s that reads: “No officer or employee of the City shall use or attempt to use his/her official position to secure unwarranted privileges or exemptions for himself/herself or others to grant any special consideration, treatment, or advantage to any citizens beyond that which is available to every other citizen.”
The Board is not a court of law that needs to hear from all sides and review all evidence on matters that come before it. As noted in our Code of Ethics, it needs to address the threshold question of whether official “conduct gave a reasonable basis for the impression that any person can unduly influence him/her in the performance of his/her official duties.”
In this case, the Board determined that yes, in fact, the actions of City officials in expediting its proceedings gave the reasonable impression of undue influence.
Having an independent check on individuals with government authority is vital to a functioning government and the public’s trust in it. When officers of the City use other levers of power, such as litigation and the financial weight, it brings to influence the ethics’ oversight of its own actions of government authority, it completely undermines why we have a Board of Ethics in the first place, and underscores exactly why we need to have one.
