Ethics Commission Renders Decision on Nelson

We finally get the last installment of the Ward Nelson appointment scandal that has filled this newsletter for the last three months. The ethics commission considered Shane Roth’s complaint seriously and deliberated for two hours over the issue. Their final decision was that Ward Nelson had done nothing wrong because an appointment is neither a “matter of law nor policy”, therefore the ethical standards did not apply. Shane Roth wrote a personal account of the whole ordeal and you can read it here: 

Shane Roth Speaks about his Ethics Complaint

My name is Shane Roth, and I was the complainant involved in the Ethics Commission hearing that was held on April 12, 2010.

One of the key things that helped me come to accept the Commission’s decision is the care that the Ethics Commission demonstrated when crafting the decision. They took this seriously. They clearly were trying to make the best decision possible. Much of the political spectrum of Whatcom County was represented in the audience at that hearing and all those present bore witness to a group of civic minded people performing a thankless and unpaid civic duty.

I took great comfort in the knowledge that the Commission felt that this question was important enough to make the time to answer. This palpable demonstration of civic responsibility has inspired me to accept the decision with all of the grace and decorum that I can bring to bear. When you see people doing the best they can, it makes you want to do the best you can, too.

I am a Democrat, obviously. I am the Technology Chair for the Whatcom Democrats. Furthermore, I produced a television ad for Dan McShane in 2009 and wrote a letter encouraging Pete Kremen to nominate him to the vacancy.

So, I had absolutely no expectation that my actions were going to be viewed outside of the context of political partisanship.

The actions documented in my complaint proved problematic to me regardless of who might have taken them. Fortunately, the odds against the events of December 2009 repeating themselves even approximately are pretty high. And the odds of those events repeating themselves precisely seem almost astronomical.

I’m not confident that, if that shoe were on a more progressive foot in December, I would have had the wherewithal to buck my own party and file a similar complaint. But I hope that the reader will give me the benefit of the doubt that these actions would be a cause of personal concern for me nonetheless, even if the actions were those of a more progressive leaning public official.

Some background might give the reader some insight into my decision to file the complaint. I moved to Whatcom County in 2008. And while a person “goes native” pretty rapidly when they move here, they also carry with them whatever cultural baggage they accumulated on the journey here. In my case, I moved here from a sleepy little southwestern college town. And like most sleepy little college towns in the southwest, it bears a Spanish name. This name translated into English means “The Meadows”.

Las Vegas.

Located in Clark County, Nevada.

Perhaps a few readers have heard of this place.

In 2007, I watched four of the seven members of that county council go to federal prison for their involvement in a corruption scandal. The scandal was known as “strippergate” and “G-sting”. A Google search will tell the reader all about that scandal. But a word of caution, the details get even more icky than the names suggest.

When the scandal broke, Clark County residents weren’t just surprised. We were stunned. The activity wasn’t some “open secret” left understood but unspoken. The casino industry, the traditional and accredited source for political scandals in Nevada, sat this one out. It also involved some weird connection to some council members in San Diego that I’m still not clear on to this day.

The “G-sting” scandal actually raised the eyebrows and dropped the jaws of a community jaded enough to embrace the unofficial, post-ironic name of “Sin City”. We didn’t see this one coming. And we were conditioned to cope with scandals like boxers are conditioned to cope with jabs to the face.

Three of the four council members were Democrats. One was a Republican. I voted for one of the Democrats that went to prison. I didn’t see that coming. And neither did that county council member. I believe that ethical complacency can pose a grave threat to any public official in any political party at any time. And Democrats enjoy no immunity to this threat. I have seen it.

If you have never elected someone to local office and watched that person you trusted go directly from occupying that office to occupying a prison cell, I’m telling you this: You haven’t missed out on anything.

If citizens want their public officials held to high ethical standards, then citizens must insist that those high standards be enforced.

Mark my words, my fellow Democrats: If you don’t hold your own to a high standard, someone else will. Don’t wait for that to happen. You will not see it coming if you aren’t even looking. Republicans are not your enemy here. The true enemy is complacency. Ethical conduct doesn’t just happen by accident. Unethical conduct, on the other hand, does so just fine.

The citizens of Whatcom County are free to debate among themselves about the right time and the right circumstances for an ethics complaint. Just so long as it is understood that it is too little and too late to do so after someone has been found guilty of criminal conduct.

Whatcom County is clearly a more ethical political environment than Las Vegas, but remember that Las Vegas isn’t exactly the gold standard for ethics in American political discourse.

I live here now. And it’s a better place.

I aim to keep it that way.