(Editor's note: This article appears originally in Seattle City Council member Richard Conlin's newsletter "Making It Work.")

On Monday, June 15, the council adopted three ordinances that update and add provisions to the city’s ethics and elections codes. The most comprehensive of the ordinances is based on a review and recommendations from the Ethics and Elections Commission, the seven volunteers who administer the Ethics and Elections codes and the Office of Ethics and Elections.

The Commissioners are appointed by the mayor and council, and operate independently, including selecting the executive director of the office. The other two ordinances are council initiatives to address specific concerns about elements of the two codes.

The goal of the commission’s recommendations is to both strengthen the ethics code and create consistency with national best practices. Seattle’s code was innovative and broke new ground when it was first adopted more than 20 years ago, but other cities have developed new practices and policies in the intervening time that can now be added to the Seattle code.

The changes including provisions that will:

• Expand the list of financial interests that require city employees to disqualify themselves from participating in city decision-making;

• Require that appearances of conflicts of interest be disclosed;

• Extend the Commission’s jurisdiction to reach certain city contractors;

• Extend the bar on former city employees assisting others with matters in which they participated as employees;

• Limit the bar on former city employees dealing with their former department to cover only communications with the department; and

• Provide a mechanism to waive the bar on individuals dealing with their former employer when it is in the best interest of the city to do so.

The council also adopted an ordinance that modified the code by prohibiting city employees or elected officials from using city funds to pay ethics fines. The current code appropriately provides legal assistance to a person who is accused of an ethics violation while carrying out city duties, on the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

However, the code had been interpreted as also allowing a person who is convicted of an ethics violation to use city funds to pay the fine. The council considers this inappropriate – when a person has been convicted of an ethics violation, they must be personally responsible for the penalty.

The third ordinance modifies the elections section of the code by giving the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission the authority to enforce a state law that prohibits candidates for city elected office from directly soliciting campaign contributions from city employees.
The Washington Public Disclosure Commission is severely constrained in its ability to enforce the law by lack of staff, and the council believes that the city office will be able to be more diligent in addressing this kind of violation.

The ordinance recognizes that employees may be on mailing lists, voluntarily make contributions, or attend events, and that these do not represent direct solicitations, but it prohibits a candidate or that candidate's representative from directly asking individual employees for contributions.

The goal is to prevent employees from feeling coerced or intimidated into contributing to a candidate who is or could be the person making decisions about their future employment or job conditions.