QUESTION
How are potential violations of post-employment restrictions monitored and enforced?
0:44:06
·
3 min
The Conflicts of Interest Board (COIB) relies on complaints and agency reports to identify violations of the 1-year ban on former employees communicating with their former agency.
- The large city workforce makes it challenging to educate all employees about conflicts of interest rules.
- Most employees understand the 1-year communication ban when educated by COIB or their agency.
- COIB has no investigators and depends on agencies to investigate potential violations.
- Violations often come to light when former colleagues report improper communications.
- COIB prosecutes violations that are reported and works to prevent further violations.
Lincoln Restler
0:44:06
A review of Boyd's enforcement actions showed that there had only been a approximately 30 fines imposed for post employment violations in the previous decade.
0:44:17
How do you monitor potential violations or how do you monitor potential violations?
0:44:23
And I'll just add my back of the envelope map map is that we see about turnover.
0:44:29
We see turnover about 20,000 people a year in city government.
0:44:32
So over a decade, we're talking about 200,000 people that have left city government.
0:44:38
But we've seen only 30 post employment violations issued.
0:44:44
So that's less than 110th of 1%.
0:44:50
How have we been doing it?
0:44:52
How what more can we be doing to identify folks who are violating this rule?
Carolyn Miller
0:44:57
Well, I'd say first that among it's it's, you know, the city workforce is huge, people work 24 hours a day, sanitation workers start shifts in the middle of the night.
0:45:07
You know, city doctors, city teachers have very regulated schedules.
0:45:11
It's very difficult to reach city employees.
0:45:13
Educate them about their obligations under the conflicts of interest law.
0:45:16
That all being said, among the provisions that's most commonly understood by people is the gifts rule and the 1 year post employment communication band.
0:45:26
And I would say that's quite effective that most times when our educators go into city offices to teach people about the complex of interest law, most people raise their hand that they understand, that they can't communicate with their former city agency for 1 year.
0:45:41
So I think in some ways the lack of enforcement actions is a reflection of a very effective educational structure by our agency and by agencies themselves for their own employees.
0:45:52
Many agencies have in the offboarding, there's probably a better word for that.
0:46:00
Procedure to tell people about the post employment restrictions.
0:46:04
We have no investigators on our staff that was a structure that was created by the Charter Vision Commission back in 8688 to separate the enforcement mechanisms from the investigation mechanisms so we rely on the department investigation to investigate.
0:46:18
But I will say that because most most city employees are aware of that 1 year agency only ban, if a former colleague can communicates with them about a private business or not for profit or some other city contract, they often are the the the contact is very it's just that one communication and someone reports it either to the agency or to the conflicts of interest board.
0:46:41
There could always be more education.
0:46:43
We are very serious about doing enforcement.
0:46:45
So if there's a complaint that we receive, it's we pursue it, we prosecute it, and we endeavor to educate the public servant involved because usually the complaint happens so quickly that they're still in their 1st post employment year, and so we can ensure that no further violations occur?
Lincoln Restler
0:47:01
I I when we're finding approximately 3 violations a year and 20,000 people are leaving service.
0:47:08
It's it's possible that everybody's just complying with the rules and the law.
0:47:12
It's possible that the loopholes are so big that people can drive have a truck through them, or it's possible that we just don't have the enforcement capacity to catch people that are doing the wrong thing.