TRAVERSE CITY — Concerns over a recent contract between Traverse City and an information technology firm could prompt city commissioners to pursue an ethics ordinance.
Commissioners will discuss the possibility Monday, with city Attorney Lauren Trible-Laucht looking for their direction on whether to draft an ordinance for future consideration, she said. She included the city’s current conflict of interest policy, adopted in 2011 and applicable to all administrators and bargaining unit employees.
Trible-Laucht also invited Mary Grover, a city resident who edited the Michigan Municipal League’s ethics handbook, to listen in and answer questions as commissioners discuss what an ethics ordinance could include, according to Trible-Laucht’s memo.
Possibilities include determining who the ordinance should apply to, whether it should cover issues such as nepotism, improper use of office and more, how city employees or officials should disclose potential conflicts and what penalties someone might face if they violate the ordinance.
Trible-Laucht said enforcing such an ordinance would come down to the penalties commissioners might want to impose. Ethics ordinances tend to be tailored closely to individual local governments, and they range from having little enforcement mechanisms to making some violations a misdemeanor.
That could involve police or county prosecutors investigating, while other ordinances call for an informal hearing. Still others allow elected officials to enforce the ordinance against each other.
Whatever the mechanism, an ordinance should serve to uphold a standard rather than as a way to attack political rivals, Trible-Laucht said — a point the MML ethics handbook makes in detail.
“That’s something that really everyone should be mindful of,” she said. “The purpose of it is to be used as a shield to protect the public interest, and not as a sword against people that may have a different viewpoint, and as a way to kind of move the needle on what your agenda might be.”
Trible-Laucht agreed the upcoming discussion is partly in response to concerns raised over contracts city Manager Liz Vogel brought to commissioners in November.
“This is something that has been brought up a few times and just never really gotten much traction or gotten across the finish line before, and I think the questions that arose around that contract have maybe brought it up to the fore and made people take another look at this as something that could really be useful or important for us to have,” she said.
City leaders OK’d one contract with Millennium Digital Technology to separate the city’s IT system from Grand Traverse County’s for $518,634 following a cyberattack that impacted the shared network. But they declined to consider a second contract that would have put the same company in charge of maintaining the newly separated system for $127,077 per year for three years.
Emailers first alerted commissioners of Vogel’s personal ties with Millennium Digital Technology President Kenneth Andrews — he attended her engagement party. They later pointed out that Andrews and Vogel’s fiancé co-own an aircraft together.
While Vogel previously said she did nothing wrong in bringing in a firm she had worked with before, she agreed she should have been more forthright with city commissioners about her personal link with Andrews. She also previously said she wasn’t aware her fiancé had a 10-percent stake in Andrews’ glider — which hasn’t flown in years — until the emailer pointed it out, but insisted it didn’t pose a conflict of interest.
Trible-Laucht said she asked Grand Traverse County Prosecutor Noelle Moeggenberg to review whether any laws had been broken, or policies or ethics breached.
Moeggenberg told Trible-Laucht that she saw no criminal wrongdoing, but declined to review any potential policy or ethics lapses, since it’s not in her office’s authority, according to Trible-Laucht and an email Moeggenberg sent to the city attorney.
Messages for Moeggenberg and Vogel were left Friday.
Mayor Amy Shamroe said she agreed the time is right to review a policy that probably hasn’t been touched in years. Previous circumstances, like then-Mayor Richard Lewis opting not to interview his son-in-law for reappointment to the Downtown Development Authority, raised questions about city ethics policies.
“I don’t think this is being brought about because we’ve seen people abuse their positions of power or their positions within local government, but clarification always helps,” she said.
Shamroe said she believes the existing conflict-of-interest policy not applying to elected or appointed officials is an oversight. While she’s seen how members of the various boards on which she’s served act considerately to avoid abusing their positions, having a policy in writing setting expectations and definitions would be good.
Having a procedure for disclosures, and what needs to be disclosed, could also be beneficial, Shamroe said. She agreed that emergency situations like the one Vogel faced when she sought the contracts with Millennium Digital Technology wouldn’t preclude a full disclosure of any ties to the contractor.
Any policy, however, would have to acknowledge that just because there’s a personal link between city staff or officials and someone looking to work with the city — which is not unusual in a small town — doesn’t mean there’s a conflict of interest, Shamroe said.
“Disclosure needs to be very straightforward, and it needs to be understood that knowing somebody won’t necessarily preclude someone from getting a contract or helping out, but everybody should just be informed of what the relationship is through the procedure,” she said.
Concerns about how Vogel handled the disclosure have some city residents considering taking their own action. Susan Maxbauer previously said she and others are looking into a voter-initiated charter amendment to add ethics rules, and to assemble a slate of city commission candidates who Maxbauer argued would better hold the city manager accountable.
Maxbauer in an email said she filed a complaint with the International City Managers Association, and accused Vogel of repeatedly breaching public trust.
Vogel previously said she also reached out to the association to discuss the situation, and denied doing anything dishonest or unethical.