June 23, 2017

Proper functioning of our government, including our local government, requires ethical conduct by our government officials.  This especially applies to our elected officials–our City Council–as they are our leaders.  And as our leaders, through their words and more importantly, through their actions, City Council members establish the ethics culture for the city.  Unfortunately, ethics for some council members is nothing more than a word.  It is not a value that guides their everyday actions on behalf of citizens.  (We will have much more to say about this in future posts.)

Ethics does get a lot of lip service from some Council members.  They like to tout that Milton is a “Certified City of Ethics.”  The Georgia Municipal Association grants this certification.  To obtain GMA’s ethics certification, a city must fulfill two requirements.

First, the city must pass an annual ethics resolution espousing the GMA’s 5 ethics principles:

• Serve others, not ourselves
• Use resources with efficiency and economy
• Treat all people fairly
• Use the power of our position for the well being of our constituents
• Create an environment of honesty, openness and integrity

Interestingly, over the past 19 months, citizens have been witness to violations of each of these principles.  For example:

• Can we really say that Council Members are not serving themselves when Council Members do not recuse themselves from matters where a developer with business before Council has provided large campaign contributions to the City Council Members?  Isn’t the purpose of such contributions to curry favor with certain Council Members?  To sway their votes?
• Can we really say that all people are treated fairly when Council Members provide citizens’ private contact information to developers, so that those developers can lobby those citizens to support their projects?  Or when Council Members attack private citizens from the council dais and in the newspaper, comparing citizens that oppose their views to non-patriots and to protesters that spit upon returning Vietnam veterans?
• Can we really say that Council Members that shamelessly promote a developer’s project really promote the well-being of our constituents?
• Can we really say that Council Members are creating an environment of honesty, openness, and integrity when Council Members flagrantly use personal and company e-mail to conduct City business, rather than their city-issued e-mail accounts?  Or when Council Members intentionally circumvent staff and government processes to achieve their objectives?

Of course, these are rhetorical questions.  We know that several Council Members act unethically without even the slightest bit of concern.

Second, the GMA requires that a city adopt an ethics ordinance that at least meets GMA’s minimal standards.  Milton has adopted such an ordinance.  It is 20 pages long and detailed.  And we suppose that it does, in fact, meet GMA’s standards.  However, does GMA certification mean Milton City Council members act ethically?  No, it does not, and even the GMA would concede this point.

Passing an ethics resolution means very little.  More important is that Milton has crafted an ordinance that meets GMA standards.  However, ultimately the ethics ordinance must be enforced.  And to be enforced, a citizen must make a complaint.  The City of Milton will not (or certainly does not seem inclined to) investigate ethics violations.  Ethics enforcement is left to citizens.  Since the City overhauled its ethics ordinance, there have been no substantive ethics complaints.

We believe the time is right to test whether the City is truly serious about ethics.  There is too much bad behavior from certain Council members to continue to ignore ethics violations.  Ignoring the misdeeds of Council Members has only served to embolden those Council Members and prompt them to double down on their misbehavior.  The Milton Coalition is committed to filing an ethics complaint, when appropriate, to ensure our City Council Members actually comply with GMA ethical standards.  Council needs to walk the Ethics talk.  And when they do not, citizens need to challenge them.

Tim Becker