Bad judgment evident in council rail junkets
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Attention City Council members still mulling whether mass-transit technology should be chosen by a panel of experts: You can stop mulling now. With last week's revelations about junkets being accepted from potential contractors, you've answered that question yourselves.
At the very least, members of this council displayed terrible judgment in the handling of the trips to Pittsburgh and Nagoya. And while it may be increasingly rare to find a politician who clearly grasps the rules of the game when it comes to ethics and conflicts of interest, the magnitude of this decision surely requires it.
Apparently, some council members just don't get it. The panel already has taken heat for accepting a free trip to the Netherlands and France at the invitation of a Dutch transit company, but backed away when the public started pelting the idea with criticism.
The lesson there, it seems, was not learned. At issue now are two more recent sojourns:
The whole idea of the gift-approval protocol is to make such offers transparent to everyone and deter the incidence of influence peddling.
Some of these trips may be necessary so that the council is informed about various technologies, but the decision to go should be made publicly.
The council requires that all gifts be approved, but preferably these trips are expenses that the city would underwrite itself. That would help ensure that decisions are made on the basis of a sensible analysis rather than payback through contract awards.
Tam said the trips would not unduly influence his decision, but simply asserting that doesn't dispel the appearance of wrongdoing.
Garcia, council transportation chairman, said he wasn't clear about the protocols when the Pittsburgh trip came up and Tam, who arranged the Japanese trip, didn't know if the garbage operation was linked to the Nagoya transit company and didn't ask.
That's inexcusable. It was their job to find out these things.
The council had better clarify how it checks out all offers of trips and gifts in the future.
And if the public can't trust them with these basic tasks, the council surely had better leave the hard questions about transit technology to the experts.
Please.
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