Wichita City Council passes ethics policy, promises campaign finance reform

Wichita’s mayor and City Council members will no longer be left to police themselves on ethics violations after passing a long-awaited and much-debated policy on Tuesday.

The ethics policy sets gift limits for elected and appointed city officials for the first time in city history. It applies to all city board appointees and council members.

The new policy creates a seven-member Ethics Advisory Board to investigate and rule on ethics complaints. CIty officials could be censured or fined up to $1,000 for serious violations. Lesser offenses would require an official to undergo ethics training.

It also offers whistleblower protection to city employees who report violations.

“It’s a pretty huge step forward from where we were — which was an aspirational, no-teeth statement — to a real process that allows for enforcement,” Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple said.

The City Council also kept in place a 63-year-old ethics ordinance prohibiting favorable treatment to “friends,” a word council members struggled to define last month before scrubbing it entirely from the new policy.

After Tuesday’s vote, the City Council now has two ethics codes: a city law, which has been in place since 1958, and a new City Council policy. City Attorney Jennifer Magana said keeping the ordinance in place will be a “helpful transition” until the council appoints an Ethics Advisory Board and an ethics officer to lead the board.

Both seek to discourage self dealing and influence peddling at City Hall.

Any gifts over $50 must be reported annually. The new policy caps gifts city officials can receive at $150 a year from a specific donor, with some exceptions.

The policy carves out exemptions to what is considered a gift, allowing city officials to accept unlimited gifts in the form of food and event admission from any nonprofit organization, political or policy-based group, educational institution, community development or faith-based organization.

Those gifts could include anything from free tickets to college sporting events to golf tournaments.

City officials covered by the policy are also entitled to unlimited free meals “when their presence is requested to attend a meeting or event.”

“I’m happy we passed it,” Whipple said. “But I still feel like there’s more work to do.”

The ethics policy is the first step towards reform following Wichita Eagle investigations into unethical behavior by local elected officials. Council members promised Tuesday that the city would soon review its campaign finance laws, code of conduct and work to adopt a social media policy aimed at cyberbullying, policies Council member Jeff Blubaugh has been pushing while expressing frustrations with the ethics policy proposal.

All four policies would be reviewed each year before May 1.

“There’s been ethics policies in the past and for whatever reason, they’ve not gained enough public trust,” Council member Bryan Frye said. “And for us to be successful at this, ... this council is going to have to continue to review it on an annual basis to make sure what’s working and what’s not working.

“It can’t just be for show,” he said. “It has to be something that’s going to continue to improve this climate and community.”

Who can be on the board?

After more than a year of debating the new ethics rules at council workshops and district advisory board meetings, the City Council centered its debate Tuesday on who would be allowed on the Ethics Advisory Board.

The city’s six council members and mayor each appoint one member to the Ethics Advisory Board, pending confirmation by a majority of the council.

Council members may have to venture outside of their usual business and political circles to find board members who qualify. The following groups are excluded from being on the board:

▪ City Council members and their spouses or domestic partners

▪ Candidates for office.

▪ City employees and their spouses.

▪ Anyone convicted of a felony or crime of moral turpitude

▪ Anyone with a conflict of interest, including representatives from groups or companies that do business with or receive economic development incentives from the city

▪ Elected or appointed members of any local, state or national committee of any political party; an active member of a political party; or active member of any partisan or nonpartisan political club or organization

Vice Mayor Brandon Johnson amended the policy to define “active member” of a political party as members of a political party “caucus, auxiliary group (or) political party committee.”

Frye moved to strike “active member of any partisan or nonpartisan political club or organization” from the policy, but his motion died for lack of a second, although several council members expressed agreement that the language seemed overly broad.

Council member Cindy Claycomb said she “could imagine that there would be some group that someone might think is a political club and another might not think is a political club.”

“I think what we may be getting into is if we support an organization, then we’re OK with them being on there, and if we don’t support them, we’re not OK,” Claycomb said.

Instead of removing the prohibition, Council members said they would use their discretion when appointing and vetting candidates for the board.

This story was originally published May 11, 2021 at 5:24 PM.