Due to screening errors and miscommunication, the City of Phoenix has yet to seat an ethics commission despite having nominees chosen for more than eight months and previously sending them to the mayor and council for approval.
The city has been involved in efforts to create an Ethics Commission since as early as 2013, after the media and legal experts increasingly pointed towards Phoenix’s lack of best practices in regard to ethics. Many other large cities already possess ethics boards with similar enforcement mechanisms.
A convoluted history
In February 2017, city leaders voted to create an independent Phoenix Ethics Commission with the purpose of investigating and enforcing possible ethics or gift policy violations by any city official or board member. The commission would consist of five members: two registered Democrats, two registered Republicans and one unaffiliated member.
The city’s Judicial Selection Advisory Board was tasked with screening possible applicants with interviews, background checks and reference calls. In June 2017, the application deadline was extended for the first time. Later in June, JSAB held a public meeting at city hall to consider 16 applicants.
In early August, JSAB forwarded a list of candidates to the mayor and council for consideration.
“There was no immediate action or reaction to it,” said deputy city manager Karen Peters. “Many months later, I think five or six months later, the names arrived at the full council for consideration.”
It is unclear when it was discovered that one of the Republican nominees was ineligible due to a position as a precinct committee member, or an elected “neighborhood leader.” The ordinance stated that applicants “may not serve as an elected official, a precinct committee person of a political party or Phoenix employee” at the time of submitting an application.
Because of this, only two Republican nominees remained eligible for two positions.
“The Council felt that there weren’t enough from which to choose for those two particular spots,” Peters said. “Two for two doesn’t really give them any option.”
However, the ordinance doesn’t state what an adequate number of candidates would be.
“Staff cited the fact that there were not an adequate number of eligible candidates, but I don’t know what in staff’s mind constitutes an adequate number,” said council assistant David Longoria. “I don’t see how we can go forward with a transparent process until those sorts of things are determined.”
As a result, at a Feb. 7, 2018 formal city council meeting, Mayor Greg Stanton withdrew the recommendations for approval of the Phoenix Ethics Commission.
Longoria said he thought the nominees should not have been put up for recommendation if the next stage of the interview process had not been completed by the mayor and council, and that the conflict of interest should have been caught sooner.
“If the next step was for the mayor and council to interview the candidates, which they never got to, it’s interesting as to why the recommendation was made to appoint and seat the Ethics Commission instead,” Longoria said. “It’s almost like that step got somehow overlooked or skipped. So to me that’s odd.”
During the February 7 formal meeting, Marcelle Costello, herself an applicant to the Ethics Commission, submitted a citizen petition.
She wanted answers as to why “1. Oral or written public comment was not invited regarding ethics commision applicants’ qualifications, 2. Why ethics commission applicants were not interviewed in public session, and 3. Whether or not the voting by the JSAB on ethics commission applicants to select the nominees was conducted in public session.“
The questions were not addressed during that meeting, although there is record of public JSAB meetings on June 28 and August 1. However, there is no evidence that public comment was requested on the nominees.
What are the next steps?
The Ethics Commission remained unseated, so applications were reopened in March 2018.
This was “to ensure there was ample opportunity for candidates to apply, and that there is a diverse pool of Republicans, Democrats and candidates with other party affiliations or no party affiliation for the City Council to choose from when they make appointments,” Matthew Heil, a Phoenix spokesperson, wrote in a statement.
JSAB will not be required to re-interview applicants already screened.
“To be honest with you, the entire process has seems to have been handled ineptly and messily,” Longoria said.
Contact the reporter at Rebecca.Speiss@asu.edu.
Correction: A previous version of this story stated that there was no proof of public meetings by the JSAB committee. The story has been updated to reflect that there were two public meetings to discuss applicants. A previous version of the article also stated that the application for the Ethics Commission closed on April 16. The city is still taking applications.
