Council Recap: Ethics, Transparency, and Trust

The Richardson City Council reviewed its Ethics ordinance on August 26, 2024, as required by law every two years. Two years ago, the City Council found nothing to amend. This year, City staff recommends six amendments. Three of the suggestions are simple clarifications to head off potential misinterpretations. Two of the changes relax the ordinance in favor of officers. And one toughens penalties, from $200 to $500 for an officer failing to obey a subpoena. I have no objection to any of these changes, and in the interest of reducing the length of this post, I won't even summarize them. Watch the video yourselves. ;-)

Instead, I want to talk about a related subject that City Manager Don Magner rolled into this agenda item, and that's for either the Ethics ordinance or the Council Rules of Order and Procedure to add guidelines for Councilmembers meeting with property owners, developers, and other stakeholders that have action scheduled for consideration by the Council, or merely to discuss topics that may come before the Council in the future.

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The topic seems to have been added to the agenda at Councilmember Jennifer Justice's request. She said, "I'm in favor of including something in our procedures for transparency purposes, about noting via an email or something that you met with a developer about a potential case on this date and discussed XYZ. I think it's just a good transparency practice."

Kudos to Councilmember Justice. It's the first action by a Councilmember in my memory to toughen our ethics rules since they were adopted in 2010. That's despite those same ethics rules failing to have any deterrence value in the case of bribery by our former mayor. It's not like suggestions haven't been made by the public, cough cough: "Building Trust".

I am all for Councilmember Justice's suggestion. Mayor Bob Dubey isn't.

I'm for it because it deters corruption by adding a little bit of sunlight to meetings where corruption might originate. Knowing that the public will be watching will discourage unethical behavior in the first place. The City of Richardson brags about transparency. Here's a way to prove they mean it. Officers should be willing to keep a record of meetings with developers.

Mayor Bob Dubey has other ideas.

I trust the Council, and I'm not really certain we need to go that far, but developers call, and I'll even say, in economic development, Mr. Magner and I meet with different companies throughout the month with no idea exactly what they're trying to do, but we're trying to encourage economic development in our city. And so we have those meetings. We don't make any promises, but every one of those meetings would have to go into this.

Source: Mayor Bob Dubey.

Mayor Dubey starts with "I trust the Council." I trust the Council, too, but there are many residents of Richardson that don't trust the Council, and legitimately so, given the fact that a recent Mayor is now serving time in a federal prison for bribery. I trusted Mayor Laura Maczka then, too. I was burned.

If Mayor Laura Maczka had been required to report all of her "meetings" with Palisades developer Mark Jordan, history might have been very different. Now we have a new Mayor of Richardson who knows all of this history but shows no interest in taking this small step of transparency to protect against a future case of misplaced loyalty.

No action was taken by the Council. Instead, City Manager Don Magner will offer a more specific suggestion for amending the Council Rules of Order and Procedure next summer after a new Council is sworn in. I can't wait.

Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

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"Mayor says, 'Trust me.'
But shadows still cloud the past.
Justice calls for light."
—h/t ChatGPT