On May 11, 2013, the Town of Sunnyvale adopted a Home Rule Charter. That charter requires the Town to appoint a charter review committee every five years to review the existing charter and make any recommendations. That resulted in a nine-person committee recommending changes to the Town Charter mostly related to duties of the Mayor and filling a Mayoral vacancy. This makes sense because our old mayor Jim Phaup ran unsuccessfully for the Texas House of Representatives in 2018, and Sunnyvale had a special election to fill the Mayor’s vacancy (page 20), which led to the election of our current Mayor Saji George that May. In addition to the charter changes, the committee recommended reviewing the Ethics Code and requiring that any town negotiations by the Mayor or a Council member include at least one additional town representative.
This seems like a good idea. In listening to the zoning discussions around the QuikTrip and Chik-fil-A developments on I-80 & Collins, there was some discussion that 1) it wasn’t clear that what the fair-market value of land Sunnyvale sold to that developer was, and 2) both Mayor Phaup and the land developer were both using Brian Mayes to run their marketing campaigns. If the Mayor were negotiating with a developer and the two parties are connected through the same campaign manager, is it really an arms-length negotiation? It seems better to allay any suspicion by adding this policy.
In October 2019, the Town of Sunnyvale appointed seven citizens to review and amend the Ethics Code to insure its compliance with the Town Charter. The committee members were Charles Anderson, Ernest Burton, Jr., Mark Egan, Mark Eldridge, Lon Hickman, Karen Hill, and Emery Powell. The report from that committee, along with the updated code of ethics, can all be found here on the Town’s website.
The code of ethics starts “The citizens and businesses of Sunnyvale are entitled to have a fair, ethical and accountable local government that
has earned the public’s full confidence for integrity.” The 2019 update to the Ethics Code added several “express prohibitions” on the activities of Elected and Appointed Officials (EAOs) such as bribery, releasing confidential information, and having outstanding conflicts of interest. That last part bears spelling out (emphasis mine):
Conflict of interest accordance with state law: No EAO or employee of the Town or a relative thereof shall:
a. Have an undisclosed financial interest in any contract, job, work, or service of or to the Town, or the sale
to the Town of any supplies, equipment, material, or real or personal property.
b. Participate in a vote or decision on any matter in which the officer has a substantial personal or financial
interest.
c. Act or serve as surety for the performance of any person doing business with the Town or as surety for
any Town officer or employee required to make a surety bond.
d. Accept any gift from any person that might reasonably tend to influence such EAO or officer in the
discharge of such person’s official duties.
As a small town that has recently developed, Sunnyvale still has some large landowners and individual financial interests that have supported the town. Leading up to this past election, I received a few emphatic comments related to relationships these players have with our mayor candidates. I’ll try to describe the major ones, and their links to our current town government, in a later piece.
If the Ethics Code is violated, provision 3.07 of the town charter gives the Town Council power to remove the violator from their position:
In my reading of the Ethics Code and Town Charter, the Town Council has the power to conduct inquiries into the official conduct of EAOs, and can do so with just a majority vote by the Council.
What’s not clear to me is whether an official’s private, unofficial conduct in a personal capacity (e.g., their day-to-day job) fall within the Town’s powers:
This is puzzling. Most ethics codes include an “outside conduct” section detailing expectations around moonlighting, external interests such as volunteering activities or serving as an expert witness, as well as accusations of individual misconduct. They often have a catch-all clause like this one (borrowed from the Department of Justice’s ethics code):
Avoiding the appearance of impropriety: Employees should avoid any actions that could create the appearance of violating the law or ethical standards.
I’ve looked for this language all across the Charter and the Ethics Code but couldn’t find it. Maybe a patient reader can help explain where I’m missing it–I promise I’m usually a good reader.
Like the Town’s Charter, the Ethics Code is supposed to be reviewed and refreshed every five years. The last review was in 2019, so we are now due for a new update–this clause seems like an obvious addition the Town should consider.
