There are some people in this world who just don’t get it.

That is, of course, why rule books were invented. When everybody understands and buys into community goals, there is no need for a rule book. But as soon as one member of the community decides his own goals are more important than the community’s, then the reason for the rule book becomes apparent.

Some of the rules can, admittedly, seem obscure, but they have the same purpose as the obvious ones. One of the most obscure, because the behavior it is meant to regulate is poorly understood, is the rule prohibiting conflicts of interests.

 

A conflict of interests occurs when someone who is entrusted with making decisions or carrying out actions has a private interest that will be affected by his action in some public matter. For example, a member of a public body that decides where schools are to be built and who also owns land that is one of the sites under consideration as a place to locate a new school has an obvious conflict of interests.

Perhaps the man is scrupulously honest and would never think of trying to influence the public body’s decision in favor of buying his land.

Experience has taught us that it’s better not to rely on that, so instead we prohibit such individuals from having anything to do with any facet of the public decision-making process when there is the possibility of a conflict of interests.

 

A scenario very like that arose the other day at a city council meeting in Solvang.

City Councilman Jim Richardson owns property that lies within 100 yards of a well proposed for Sunny Fields Park, and as a consequence, the value of his property could be affected by a decision the council was poised to make whether to drill the well.

Richardson recused himself, meaning that he stepped down and left the room when the matter of the well came up, and in so doing he met the requirement outlined in the California Government Code that he not do anything to influence the other council members’ decision on that matter.

 

He returned to the room, however, presenting himself as a private citizen with an interest in the matter and spoke during the public comment phase of the council’s meeting. That may seem to be a clear breach of the rule, but it actually was not – he is a private citizen and can speak to his elected government officials the same as any other private citizen. The Government Code recognizes that right, and he limited his remarks to the time allotted to each speaker.

But afterward, when a vote had been taken to drill a test hole, reserving for later the actual vote whether to drill a well, he returned as a member of the council and attempted to add to his earlier public-comment-period remarks. That was a foul. He was speaking in his capacity as a member of a public body to other members of the public body on a matter likely to be brought before the body for a later vote when he had a personal interest in the outcome.

 

Richardson’s arguments, his position vis-à-vis the well, are reasonable and may very well be correct. That’s not the point, because it is so very important that the public, which entrusts its treasury to public bodies such as the city council, has a right to expect that no member of a public body will act out of conflict of interests. Not only must the process be free of such conflicts in fact, it also must appear to be free of them. Thus, it is incumbent upon the members of council to err on the side of caution, which is to say on the side of public confidence.

It is of little importance that a vote already had been taken. It was a preliminary vote, one related to a preliminary act, digging a test hole. His attempt to speak was directed at the very council members who later would look at the results of the test drilling and decide what to do next – drill the well or abandon the site.

 

The prohibition in the law is that he may not attempt to influence other members of the council, directly or indirectly, and he may not vote, when the subject at hand is a matter in which he has a financial interest. There is no time element to the prohibition – he may not do it, ever, regardless of whether a vote of the other members of the council has been taken or will not be taken until some remote time in the future.

Richardson explained to reporter Irene Jones that he only wanted to add something he had forgotten to say during his public comment. And to do that he sought to make a “point of personal privilege.”

Too bad, he can’t.

We’re sure that Richardson is not a scoundrel, and that he really was trying to do his public duty.

But he needs a quick reality check on what conflicts of interests are and what he must do to protect the public from his own.

 

That’ll be 2 cents, please.