Palm Springs ethics committee makes recommendations to City Council
Subcommittee members with the Ethics, Transparency and Governmental Reform Task Force have spent almost a year looking for new ideas to find the best practices for the city of Palm Springs.
The group made its first public presentation to the City Council on Wednesday night.
“We had a really good subcommittee, so it was a really good working group so it was very positive,” said Jack Delany a subcommittee member.
“It is time for change, and change will be made, but there is more work to be done,” said Wallace Skok, a subcommittee member.
This task force was put together following the FBI raid in September of 2015 as part of a public corruption investigation.
“You can avoid the types of problems that they have had in the past with the former mayor and other issues,” said Skok.
Some of the ideas discussed include adding term limits for City Council members and switching from a separately elected mayor to a rotating a member of City Council having the job.
“There is this illusion that the mayor has more power than the other members of City Council, but in reality the mayor is only ceremonial. That’s why almost every other city in the valley rotates the mayor to avoid the mayor having too much power in the eyes of developers and others,” said council member Geoff Kors.
Other ideas include updating the city’s conflict of interest code and designating a person or group to oversee that code to ensure council members and city staff are following it.
The City Council was given 97 pages of recommendations. If adopted, some of the changes would take a while to take effect.
“Some stuff will be happening faster than others, and before we would vote on any legislation or a charter amendment we would have another public meeting so we can get more public input,” said Kors.
The subcommittees were focused on finding reforms for grants, communications, campaign finance, election reform, ethics, transparency, diversity, inclusiveness, and training.
