Howling at the moonlighting

IT'S PERFECTLY legal for City Council members to have an outside job.

According to a recent ethics task force, it's even ethical.

But the news that Councilman Bill Green just landed a new job with a new law firm reminds us that this is an issue that needs closer scrutiny.

Bill Green isn't the only Council member with an outside job. A handful of others, including Jim Kenney, also pull in private paychecks. And they even make compelling arguments for why it's not necessarily a bad thing: For example, having one foot in the private sector gives them exposure to the "real world," and can build their expertise in industries other than city government.

But stacked against benefits, the potential for, and the appearance of, conflicts of interest is too great to tolerate for a law-making body. Moonlighting Council members we talked to say they would never take a job that compromises the public trust.

But the real world we live in, power can be both explicit and implicit.

An elected position with power in the city is an attractive lure for employers. Naturally, lawmakers may argue that it's their skills and experience that got them their job, not their relationship to City Hall. But how do they know? How much business does a firm get based on their connection to an elected official with power over budgets and tax policy? Again, despite their efforts to stay uncompromised, Council people can't answer that question.

And that's a problem.

Last year, Councilman Frank Rizzo (who does work for a radio station) tried to address the issue of outside employment with a bill that would prohibit Council from working for companies that might do business with the city. The reception to that was chilly, to say the least. And that's another beef: why are Council members the ones who get to vote on the rules that can materially benefit them?

A recent mayor's task force on ethics gave thumbs-up to outside employment, but called for reporting of firm and job description. We think salary should be reported, too. After all, someone who makes more money from an outside job than their job in Council can reasonably be expected to show more loyalty to the person who pays them more. And those of us who pay the public salaries have a right to know that.

And we pay them a lot: Rank and file Council members get a $116,000 salary; leadership positions make up to $126,000 and the Council prez gets $148,000.

Not bad for part-time jobs.

That's right: The City Charter of the 1950s defined City Council as part time. And while we believe most Council members work hard, the fact is, most don't work 365 days a year - or even 265 days.

The Committee of Seventy has pushed for change on this: It wants to limit outside employment for a certain level of city jobs that would include elected officials and influential appointees. There should be no problem drawing a line around those who are in a position of making fundamental decisions about the city, starting with elected officials.

In this economy, we don't want to deny anyone full employment.

But that doesn't mean that those people who work for us, the taxpayers, shouldn't be subject to some reasonable limits.

And if serving the public doesn't provide them with enough money to raise their families in the long run, well, let them serve a shorter time. That would bring about a change we need even more: term limits. *