Shogan wants ethics policy revamp

Thu., May 25, 2006

By Mike Prager mikeprager15@gmail.com (509) 459-5454

Spokane City Council President Joe Shogan said Wednesday he wants all new top-level city employees brought under the city’s ethics policy after a dozen or more top employees were found to be exempt.

Shogan said he is drafting an ordinance through the city legal department to require compliance with the ethics code for all new top hires. The city is currently seeking a new police chief.

The proposal would also give Mayor Dennis Hession authority to renegotiate existing contracts with about 13 top employees who signed personal services contracts in 2003, although Shogan said that the city likely cannot force those employees to renegotiate.

The issue arose after a departing public works and utilities director was determined to be exempt from the new ethics policy because his personal services contract from 2003 predated last January’s adoption of the new ethics policy.

Former director Roger Flint took a job earlier this month as Spokane-area manager and vice president for CH2M Hill, an international engineering firm with millions of dollars in city public works contracts.

The ethics ordinance seeks to prohibit departing city employees from working on projects or issues with which they were involved while on the city payroll. That hands-off policy in the first year of leaving city employment is intended to prevent the appearance of a conflict of interest, as well as the risk of inflated bids or behind-the-scenes deals.

CH2M Hill officials have said that Flint will not work on any city contracts for that one-year period.

Two different lawyers in the city attorney’s office have said that Flint is exempt from the ethics code because of the pre-existing personal services contract, after a neighborhood organization submitted an ethics complaint against Flint earlier this month.

Not everyone at City Hall agrees.

Councilman Bob Apple said he believes the personal services contracts do not exempt Flint or the others from falling under the ethics policy and that Flint’s departure to CH2M Hill was “just wrong” ethically.

According to records on file with the city clerk, the city has at least a dozen top employees under personal services contracts signed in 2003 under former Mayor John Powers. Those contracts say that any changes are to be “mutually agreeable.”

The employees include Deputy Mayor Jack Lynch, Fire Chief Bobby Williams, acting Police Chief Jim Nicks as assistant police chief, Deputy Police Chief Al Odenthal and Pat Dalton, assistant city attorney.

Former Mayor Jim West stopped using personal services contracts for his top hires, and Hession has not used them either, said city spokeswoman Marlene Feist.

Dalton is one of two assistant city attorneys who reviewed the applicability of the new ethics policy to Flint. Dalton advised the mayor in a draft opinion that the ethics policy does not apply to employees with personal services contracts.

Dalton acknowledged Wednesday that the fact that he has a personal services contract puts him in an awkward position, since he’s giving an opinion to the mayor on an exemption to the ethics policy based on a contract virtually identical to the one he holds.

However, Dalton said he wants his personal services contract renegotiated so that he is brought under terms of the ethics policy. Dalton said he is also working on the ordinance to give the mayor permission to seek renegotiations with himself and other top employees with those contracts.

Hession said he wants all of his top at-will employees brought under the ethics policies but that he wasn’t sure he could require those with existing contracts to renegotiate. The mayor also said he will ask city unions to agree to bring their memberships under the ethics policy.

The City Council, in adopting the new ethics policy, said that union workers would only be brought under the policy through labor contract negotiations.

On Wednesday, Hession declined again to make public a draft opinion from Dalton that explains the city’s assessment that Flint is exempt from the ethics policy because, Hession said, the opinion is a privileged attorney-client “work product” and exempt from the state’s open records act.

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