What's Legal Versus What's Ethical (And Why B.C. Mayors Need To Watch Their Step)

If you've been following the news about the Olympic swag offered to a number of British Columbia mayors, and previously discussed by me in the blog post "Chilliwack Mayor A Hero or Just Doing Her Job?", you know that there has been considerable discussion of whether or not B.C. mayors should or shouldn't accept the seemingly-lavish Olympics-related gifts offered by the BC lottery and BC Transmission Corporation.

Here's an interesting update on this story from the Globe and Mail in which they mention which mayors have chosen to accept the Olympics tickets, etc., which haven't, and who is apparently still undecided. (Congratulations, by the way, to the mayors of Cranbrook, Prince George, Nanaimo, and Surrey, all of whom joined mayor Sharon Gaetz of Chilliwack in turning down the gifts. Municipal ethics hero nods to each of you! Thanks, also, to BC's Minister of Community Development who is reported to have urged officials to "err on the side of caution" in making their decision. )

Though I would like to hear the arguments from the mayors accepting the gifts as to their reasoning for doing so, something else in the Globe and Mail article stuck out to me as far more disturbing in the absence of additional context through which to understand its impact. The article reports that, "...the lawyer who helped draft the province's community charter, said the offers look legal."

I would strongly suspect that s/he is absolutely right. So why does that bother me? Two very different reasons, actually:

1. If there are laws detailing what a city official or employee can or cannot accept, they ought to be crystal clear so that no one - official or citizen alike - should be able to perceive the slightest degree of ambiguity.

2. As has been said beyond repeatedly, just because something is legal doesn't automatically make it ethical. Not only that, but even the appearance of inappropriate influence in governmental decisions taints the trust of local governments.

Some of the BC mayors might reason that they can accept the Olympic gifts because they have no current business with the entities offering them. In the short view, a reasonable, if extremely shaky case might be able to be made on that basis. However, the world doesn't work on the short view in such matters. If those entities went on to have business with those cities next year, or in two, three, or five years, would the damage not already have been done? Even if the same individuals are no longer part of either the business or the city, the pre-existing relationship between the city and the business would, to some degree, necessarily raise questions about the legitimacy of the deal. Still further, even in the short run, if there is a cozy-even-if-it-is-still-legal deal between a vendor and an official, does that not increase the risk of that official, consciously or not, 'talking up' that vendor to other officials or municipalities and thereby unduly affecting those others' decision-making?

"Just say no" is a terrible prescription for most kinds of behavior change - it simply doesn't work most of the time in the absence of other terribly important supports. As for accepting gifts that can cause undue influence or its appearance, "just say no" not only works fine but is essential.