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You'd think that in a room with at least 20 people who are devoted to ethics - Mayor Nutter, members of the city Ethics Board, the city's chief integrity officer, and members of a newly appointed ethics task force that was the subject of a meeting yesterday - someone would have an answer.
No one did.
Nutter said that the executive branch has no jurisdiction over Council and that we have to ask the people involved.
Members of the Ethics Board say it is not in their jurisdiction.
Council President Anna Verna, who has jurisdiction over Council, wouldn't answer.
All of which made us wonder: Whom do we have to bribe to get some ethics around here?
We asked the question about whether it's right for an elected official to have - or give the appearance of having -a romantic relationship because of photos of Councilman Wilson Goode Jr. and his aide Latrice Bryant in Jamaica on vacation looking well, romantic. The release of these photos followed questions that Fox 29 raised about the accuracy of Bryant's time sheets.
But we also asked because we wanted to know if the city thinks such relationships are ethical or not. To our mind, the romantic involvement of a supervisor with an employee can lead to big problems - in judgment, in objectively monitoring performance, and sometimes, even big legal problems. And when the people involved are elected to represent the public trust, and are getting paid with tax dollars, the taxpayer becomes part of the relationship.
We think it's a questionable practice to have spouses or significant others employed by elected officials. Sure, Council has a history a nepotism. But this is supposed to be a new day, with a new focus on ethics.
The fact is, there is no legal code or current statute that prohibits nepotism or covers other kinds of relationships. But ethics is a bigger umbrella than the purely legal. Ethics is about the right thing. It's about correcting the reality or the perception that a public servant might be corrupted by love, money, or anything else.
That's our opinion.
We only wish the city could tell us whether we're right or wrong. *
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