Policing the Politicians

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Are we living in an Age of Ethics? Quite the opposite. A lack thereof recently led the Port District to examine its code of ethical conduct. And in what’s promised to be a stronger measure, the city of San Diego formed an ethics commission, created last year by the mayor and City Council. Three Republicans, three Democrats and one Independent were appointed commissioners. On March 5, the citizenry voted for Proposition B, changing the city charter to grant the commission power to subpoena documents for investigations. So there’s a new sheriff in town, right?

Hopefully.

Hardly anyone is against having a new watchdog group to oversee the political process. But don’t expect a pit bull coming out of the gate. The commission’s executive director is the extremely capable and eminently trustworthy Charles Walker. The 55-year-old former FBI agent spent 30 years investigating organized crime. He was an ethics officer in the bureau, and he says, “In my time with the FBI, I have seen just about everything in the area of human conduct.”

But Walker warns the public not to expect immediate fireworks or headline-grabbing scandal. The commission has jurisdiction over some 1,500 elected officials, candidates for elective office, board members, commission members and unclassified city employees. It does not have jurisdiction over the Port District, the school board or the district attorney’s office. It does not have jurisdiction in Brown Act (open meeting) violations.

“Ultimately, the success of this commission should not be based on how many people we punish,” says Walker. “It should be judged like ‘loss prevention’ in private industry.” Besides processing complaints, the commission will also offer advice to politicians on ethical matters that arise. It will be hard to quantify, but Walker says success should be measured by the number of conflict-of-interest situations he can help city officials avoid, by being around to raise ethical awareness.

“We want to help avoid situations like the Stallings thing,” he says. Valerie Stallings was forced out of her council seat for accepting undisclosed gifts from Padres owner John Moores. Many point to that case as the final impetus for the creation of the San Diego Ethics Commission.

“San Diego is not like an East Coast city that has a tradition of corruption and payoffs—we don’t have that history,” Walker says. “We have had pockets of corruption. Before we become like an East Coast city, it’s a good thing we put this commission into place.”

Essentially, Walker sees his job as “minding the local ethics store.” He says there’s not a real need to create new ethics laws. Rather, he plans to dust off existing policies and see that they are enforced.

“The Fair Political Practices Commission and the state attorney general have always had jurisdiction over our local officials,” he says. “But typically, law enforcement–type agencies—like the district attorney and the city attorney and so forth—have more serious criminal violations to deal with. So ethical violations have been pushed to the back.”

At present, the Ethics Commission—with a 2002 budget of $240,000—has a paid staff consisting of just Walker and an administrative assistant. An investigator will be brought on board soon. In comparison, Los Angeles has a long-established ethics commission, with dozens of employees who levy hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. San Francisco’s ethics commission is less than 10 years old and has a nine-person staff. San Diego’s commission is modeled—in miniature—after these other two in-state agencies.

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