Off the Beat: Do City Ethics Laws Forbid Officials From Accepting Gifts?
Every gift the city of Honolulu has been offered in 2011, amounting to about $450,000, has been rubber-stamped by the City Council.
This despite language in the city’s ethics guidelines on gifts that explicitly states that officials are prohibited from accepting any gifts if, “The source of the gift(s) has an interest that the public official may affect in carrying out his or her duties.”
Yet this year the city has accepted gifts from donors like the Bank of Hawaii, Target Stores, Hawaiian Electric Co. and land developers. It’s hard to believe that such businesses have no interests that might be affected by public officials in carrying out their duties.
If you read the language of the guidelines literally, the argument could be made that at least some gifts over $200 should not be accepted by the city.
There’s a fine line in the language of the law that may explain why all the gifts are being accepted.
The gift guidelines bar “city officers and employees” from accepting or soliciting gifts that could reasonably be assumed to have been given in order to influence or reward the performance of official duties.
But for the gifts donated in 2011, the vast majority were donated either to city agencies — or the city itself. This, in effect, is a protection for city officers and gift-givers. If there is no specific officer or city employee identified, there can’t be any conflict.
There is, however, separate guidance offered by the city ethics commission that deals specifically with gifts offered to city agencies.
“Many people and businesses rely on city agencies to issues permits, regulate industries or select vendors and enter into contracts,” former ethics Chair Lex Smith wrote in a 2006 . “It is important, therefore, that an agency representative not request a donation under circumstances where the request may appear coercive to the person being solicited or create an expectation of special treatment in the mind of a donor.”
The memorandum offers specific examples of what wouldn’t be considered acceptable. One example offered is a department head asking a contractor who works for the department to give it money to send employees to a work-related conference.
Not too hard to see why that would be a no-no.
But it’s a pretty drastic example. What about the less obvious?
In February, First Hawaiian Bank for the Mayor’s 45th Senior Recognition Program. The city Department of Community Services received the donation. But the money was explicitly dedicated to the mayor’s event.
Can First Hawaiian Bank argue that the mayor doesn’t have the ability to affect its business?
The city council doesn’t see any conflict. But what do you think?
