At the Board of Aldermen meeting on December 8th the Board unanimously agreed on appointing a subcommittee of members to continue working on Shelton’s Code of Ethics. Also discussed but not listed on the agenda (it was put under “President’s Report”) was an interesting “maneuver” regarding the make up of our Board of Ethics which merits further discussion.
Shelton’s city charter requires that the three appointed members of the Board of Ethics consist of one Republican, one Democrat and one unaffiliated representative.
Read background in this Valley Indy article about the issue.
This seemingly would keep all things even and hopefully keep political philosophies from entangling the ethics process.
There was a vacancy on Shelton’s Board of Ethics and back in June the Board of Aldermen appointed a new member. The member that left the Board of Ethics was the unaffiliated member. So the Aldermen needed to appoint another unaffiliated member to the position. The Mayor recommended a Republican for the position and the Aldermen approved it leaving the Board of Ethics with one Democrat and two Republicans and in violation of the city charter. Was it just a simple oversight?
So the Aldermen needed to fix this. Logical reasoning would tell you that the fix was simple, find an unaffiliated person to take the open position. But instead what happened simply amazed me. One of the Republicans on the Board of Ethics changed their party affiliation to unaffiliated in order to meet the charter requirements. Now of course there is nothing wrong with someone changing their party affiliation but to do it as a current sitting Ethics board member just to meet a charter required mandate certainly peaks my curiosity.
While I am sure all three current members will do their best to serve the public’s interests it is hard to fathom that someone who is registered with a political party and almost certainly shares that party’s beliefs (hence they are registered with the party) all of a sudden changes their party affiliation and now can represent the position of the unaffiliated position on our Board of Ethics. It certainly appears on the surface to be a quick and easy way to circumvent the city charter. How would Shelton voters like it if our mayor changed his party affiliation to Democrat the day after the election? The answer to that should be easy to figure out.
Everyone is entitled to their own political philosophies and opinions on issues facing our city. We can all debate and at the end of the day agree to disagree on things. But there is a reason our charter stipulates the make up of the Board of Ethics. The decision made here seems to be the easiest way to bypass the very reason our charter reads how it does. It stinks of politics invading what should be a non political board in our city.
The author of this column is the chairman of the Shelton Citizens United Party. The opinions expressed here are his own. The Valley Independent Sentinel accepts guest columns on topics of local importance on a case by case basis. Columns must be no more than 500 words long.
a seemingly unethical move- on the part of the specially formed ethics committee I’d say… sad and disappointing.
Regarding the ethics of Public Service: Were the public’s interests served as opposed to the official’s personal interests or political interests? Marginally.
What is unfortunate are the errors made in administrating City functions. The recommendation by the Mayor was immediately invalid in regard to the Charter. The appointment by the Alderman must not have been reviewed thoroughly (rubber stamped), or the conflict with the Charter would have been caught at that stage.
The Charter was violated at the point the Alderman made the appointment, and the action should be noted on the record as invalid. No debate.
Since that time however, a member of the Ethics Board (and as a point of terminology garbled in the City’s Charter that should be corrected, “Boards” are normally bodies that are elected, while “Commissions” are typically appointed) has resigned his party affiliation. Thus, if the same action by the Alderman were to repeat today, it would be valid, but clearly at that previous point in time, it was not.
Some may view this as semantics, or politics. I do not. I view it as leadership not knowing the basic operations manual (Charter), thus creating a comedy of errors and illustrating the need to improve process to avoid it occurring again or similar type of basic mistakes.
As I have learned recently, this sort of maneuver is all too common in local politics, where party affiliation is more often than not simply a matter of expediency. I am not a Shelton resident, but Shelton is hardly alone in dealing with this sort of cronyism and corruption (and this is clearly an example of both). I thank the Valley Indy for allowing well written and well reasoned guest columns, and offer my full support to Mr. Panek. Keep your head up when the attacks come Mr. Panek, and stand your ground, for you are quite correct in your criticism. Local government needs to be held accountable, and with the decline of the small town local paper, local governments everywhere are enjoying unprecedented levels of license to act in any way they please. This is why the Valley Independent Sentinel is such an important media source, that deserves our support.