Thursday, August 18, 2011

All Eight Ogden Mayoral Candidates to Participate in August 24 Forum

All eight of Ogden’s candidates for mayor will participate in a public forum to be held Wednesday, August 24, beginning at 6:30 pm in the Browning Auditorium at Ogden’s historic Union Station. Everyone is invited to attend. After a half hour of informal mingling with the public, the candidates will address the assembly and answer moderated questions from 7:00 until 8:30.

The Browning Auditorium is located at the north end of Union Station, on Wall Avenue at 25th Street.

Kimbal Wheatley, a professional facilitator who lives in Ogden Valley, will moderate the forum.

The event is sponsored by the Ogden Ethics Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that promotes better ethics in Ogden City government. At the forum, candidates will have a chance to express their views not only on ethics but also on the full range of issues that concern Ogden citizens: taxes and fees, debt reduction, downtown development, job creation, transportation, recreation, land use, public safety, and more.

The event’s organizers are compiling a list of prepared questions for the candidates, with input from a wide spectrum of community organizations and stakeholders. Audience members at the event will also have a chance to submit questions.

The eight candidates for Mayor of Ogden are Jonny Ballard, Mike Caldwell, Jason Goddard, Neil Hansen, Brandon Stephenson, John H. Thompson, Susan "Susie" Van Hooser, and Steven Van Wagoner. Basic information about the candidates is summarized in the program for Wednesday's forum, available at http://ogdenethics.org/campaign2011/MayorForumProgram.pdf.

A similar forum for Ogden city council candidates will be held one week later, August 31, at the same place and time.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Ogden Candidates Weigh in on Ethics

Nearly all of Ogden’s candidates for mayor and city council have expressed their views on ethics in municipal elections and government, in response to inquiries from the Ogden Ethics Project, a nonpartisan organization formed in May. Overall, the Ogden Ethics Project is encouraged by these responses and the ongoing discussions that they have generated.

As the campaign was getting underway in July, the Ogden Ethics Project sent each candidate a letter and questionnaire.

The questionnaire asked candidates whether they would agree to five specific voluntary limitations on funding their campaigns, provided that all of their opponents similarly agreed. Of the 17 candidates, 11 signed and returned this questionnaire, while three others responded to it in general terms without returning the actual document.

Nearly all of those who responded endorsed three limitations that would avoid certain loopholes in Ogden’s existing campaign finance disclosure rules:
  • Accepting contributions from political action committees only if they are in compliance with all laws and are not being used to circumvent contribution limits or disclosure requirements;
  • Not accepting contributions made indirectly through third parties;
  • Not encouraging others to make independent expenditures, bypassing their campaign treasury, on their behalf or in opposition to any opponent.
The most controversial item on the questionnaire asked candidates not to accept contributions from corporations, business entities, unions, or other organizations, with the exception of registered political action committees (which are subject to disclosure laws). As explained in a Guest Commentary that appeared in the Ogden Standard-Examiner on August 4, this request is intended to remove any appearance of impropriety in the awarding of city contracts, incentives, and permits, and to prevent business entities from being used to circumvent contribution limits and disclosure requirements.

Of the eleven candidates who signed the questionnaire, six endorsed the item that would restrict contributions from businesses and organizations. The Ogden Ethics Project values the diversity of opinion on this issue and understands that it takes time to update a community’s views about such a long-established custom.

The final item on the questionnaire asked candidates to report the name of the employer of any individual who contributes more than $250. This suggestion mirrors a similar requirement in federal campaigns, intended to give voters more information about the special interests that might be backing a candidate. Seven candidates endorsed this proposal.

Because some candidates did not respond, the Ogden Ethics Project will not treat the questionnaires as firm commitments from the candidates who returned them. Some candidates have said they will voluntarily respect the limitations even if their opponents do not similarly agree, and that is their choice. Most importantly, the questionnaire has accomplished the goal of raising awareness of campaign ethics and generating ongoing discussions.

Along with the questionnaire, the Ogden Ethics Project invited each candidate to submit a position statement on ethics in Ogden City Government. Nine candidates took us up on this invitation, and their statements are now posted at http://ogdenethics.org/resources.html. Among the responses there were relatively few that addressed specific elements of the Ogden Ethics Project platform pertaining to open government, conflicts of interest, and fairness in city contracting, communications, and personnel matters. This is probably because candidates are unfamiliar with existing ethics laws pertaining to municipal government, and are therefore unsure of how those laws might need modification.

Now that the candidates have weighed in, we hope the public will join this discussion. Please do so by leaving a comment!

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Eleven years of Ogden City Council minutes now online

In the interest of promoting open government and as a service to the public, the Ogden Ethics Project is now hosting an archive of Ogden City Council minutes on its web site. The archive can be found at http://ogdenethics.org/councilminutes.html.

The archive dates from January 2000 through early 2011, and is organized chronologically. It includes minutes of all public city council meetings including work sessions, study sessions, and meetings where the council was acting as the Redevelopment Agency Board or Municipal Building Authority. Only closed executive sessions are omitted.

Although the Ogden Ethics Project web site does not have custom search capability, the archive has been indexed by Google and will presumably be indexed by other major search engines in the near future. Thus, the public can now look up city council actions and discussions on any topic of interest over the last eleven years.

Minutes of selected city council meetings since 2008 can also be found on the Ogden City web site. However, the collection posted there is incomplete and its content is not accessible to search engines.

The Ogden Ethics Project would like to thank the Ogden City Recorder’s office for providing the electronic files that make up the newly posted archive.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Candidates asked to accept voluntary campaign finance limitations

This new press release describes our latest initiative...


ETHICS GROUP ASKS CANDIDATES TO ADOPT VOLUNTARY CAMPAIGN FINANCE LIMITATIONS


The Ogden Ethics Project, a nonpartisan organization formed in May, is asking all Ogden City municipal election candidates to adopt a set of voluntary campaign contribution limitations.


The limitations will close loopholes in Ogden’s existing campaign finance disclosure law, ensure that voters know the sources of candidates’ funds, and encourage all candidates to represent a broad spectrum of citizens rather than just a few special interests. By city ordinance, campaign contributions are already limited to $5000 for mayoral candidates and $1500 for city council candidates.


In brief, the voluntary limitations would:

  • Prohibit campaign contributions from corporations, business entities, and unions;
  • Allow contributions from registered political action committees, but only if they are not being used to circumvent contribution limits or disclosure requirements;
  • Prohibit contributions that are made indirectly, through third parties;
  • Prohibit any coordination between a candidate’s campaign and anyone making independent political expenditures that bypass the campaign treasury;
  • Require individuals contributing $250 or more to report their employers’ names.

Restrictions such as these are already mandated in many states and at the federal level. The Ogden Ethics Project is asking candidates to voluntarily accept these limitations only if their opponents also agree to do so.


In past elections, contributions from business interests have dominated some of Ogden’s campaigns, and several candidates have accepted contributions from organizations that were used to avoid contribution limits and disclosure requirements.


The checklist of voluntary campaign contribution restrictions is being mailed today to all known candidates for mayor and city council, and will be mailed to newly declared candidates soon after they register with the city. The checklist can also be downloaded from http://ogdenethics.org/resources.html.


After all candidates have had an opportunity to respond, a summary of their responses will be posted at http://ogdenethics.org.


Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Conflict of interest laws in Utah, Nevada, and the Supreme Court

One of today’s top news stories is the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding Nevada’s conflict of interest law in the face of a First Amendment challenge. Here, for example, is the excellent write-up in the New York Times:
Even while the federal courts are allowing corporations to shelter their political contributions under the First Amendment, it’s good to know that elected officials can’t similarly shelter their conflicts of interest.

The general principle here is simple enough: An elected representative’s vote on a particular piece of legislation is not protected speech, because casting such a vote is a function of the representative’s office, rather than a personal right.

The particulars of the Nevada case are also interesting. The offending official was a city council member in Sparks, a city just slightly bigger than Ogden. His offense was to vote to approve a casino project that his campaign manager was closely involved with. (Whether that association was close enough to create a conflict of interest is a tricky question that the Supreme Court didn’t try to answer.)

Could a similar conflict of interest arise in Ogden? Obviously the proposed development wouldn’t be a casino, but our mayor and city council exert tremendous control over local real estate developments. It’s easy to imagine that some of these officials, or their family members or close associates, might have a financial interest in a project seeking city approval. But how would we know? Utah’s disclosure requirements for local officials are extremely weak. Also, whereas Nevada has a state Commission on Ethics that investigates and punishes ethics violations, Utah law trusts the mayor to oversee all such investigations within a city—even when it’s the mayor who commits the violation!

The Ogden Ethics Project platform would address these shortcomings in the following ways:
  • Require elected officials and appropriate employees to disclose all ownership of, or financial interest in, real property in Weber County, as well as any financial interest in companies doing business in Weber County.
  • Establish a process whereby the city council can investigate allegations of conflict of interest involving the mayor.
  • Post all conflict of interest disclosure statements on the city’s web site.
Beyond these basic measures, we hope that someday the Utah Legislature will create a state ethics commission, raising Utah’s ethical standards at least to the level of Nevada’s.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Gondola records lawsuit shows policy reforms needed

The Ogden Sierra Club recently announced the final settlement of its four-year legal battle with the city over access to a variety of records related to the gondola proposal. I (Dan Schroeder) was the Club’s lead volunteer in this lawsuit, and this dispute was one of many incidents that motivated the formation of the Ogden Ethics Project.

The Ogden Ethics Project is neutral on the gondola idea but we are strong advocates of open government. In this particular incident, the Ogden City Attorney’s office demonstrated a troubling obsession with secrecy, attempting to stretch Utah’s open records law to exempt far too many public records from disclosure. This obsession even extended to several records that contained no significant information at all. Still more troubling was the decision of the volunteer Records Review Board to uphold the city attorney’s classification of every single record—more than 40 in total.

Two of the planks in the Ogden Ethics Project platform would help resolve these kinds of disputes far more quickly, with far less expense:
  • Broaden the representation on the city’s Records Review Board to include citizen and media advocates—not just government insiders.
  • Allow denied GRAMA requests to be appealed to the State Records Committee.
If either of these reforms had been in place four years ago, it’s unlikely that this case ever would have gone to court.

Further reforms may also be possible. Utah may create a training program for government records officers, and Ogden could then require its staff and/or Records Review Board members to go through such a program. The city could also adopt policies to encourage its attorneys, when reviewing public records requests, to interpret exemptions narrowly and to represent the interests of the city as a whole rather than just those of one particular branch of government.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Can corporate campaign contributions be banned?

One of the planks in the Ogden Ethics Project platform is to ban direct campaign contributions to candidates from corporations (including other business entities and unions). Utahns for Ethical Government advocates a similar restriction for state legislative candidates. But is such a restriction constitutional?

Last year the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a ban on independent political expenditures by corporate entities, ruling in the Citizens United case that such a ban violates the First Amendment protection of free speech. At the same time, however, the Court explicitly recognized earlier precedent upholding the existing ban on direct corporate contributions to federal candidates.

Yesterday, however, a federal district judge issued a ruling that extended the Citizens United conclusion to direct corporate contributions. If such a ruling is upheld at higher levels, it could spell trouble for all attempts to ban these contributions.

There are two problems with allowing corporations, other business entities, and unions to contribute to political candidates:
  1. These entities don’t contribute out of mere generosity or public spirit. As organizations they expect something tangible in return for their contributions, and that makes their contributions hard to distinguish from bribes.
  2. Contributors can use business entities to avoid disclosing their names or to evade contribution limits, either contributing through entities that they already control or setting up sham entities that merely launder contributions for this purpose.
These problems have already occurred in Ogden, and they are sure to recur if Ogden doesn’t put tighter restrictions in place.

As for yesterday’s court decision, it fortunately won’t have any effect over the short term. If this or a similar ruling is eventually upheld by the Supreme Court, it will overturn a century of precedent on campaign finance reform in the United States. That seems unlikely but if it does happen, we’ll let national-level organizations take the lead in sorting out the new law and devising strategies to deal with it.