ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : A Baldfaced Conflict of Interest

City Councilman Orville Amburgey of Costa Mesa should abstain from voting when a housing project that his son is helping develop comes before the council. The conflict of interest is obvious, yet Amburgey was so bold as to declare: “It’s perfectly legitimate for me to cast my vote. My son is a taxpayer in this city, and he has the same rights as any other taxpayer.”

With that twisted logic, the councilman turned his own poor judgment into an issue of his son’s rights. So Amburgey says he’ll go ahead and vote in favor of a Valley Road project that in its current form calls for eight single-family detached units. The younger Amburgey deserves to have his project considered on its merits, of course, but only with dad on the sidelines. Amburgey voting for Amburgey is a no-no.

The councilman slides in under the tag of state conflict-of-interest laws because his son is no longer a dependent. A city attorney also says that Amburgey did not break the law when he sent out a letter on city stationery that attacked opponents of the housing project. But if there ever were a case of violating the spirit of the law and clinging to the letter, this is it. There’s more at issue when a father votes for a son’s project than merely squeaking by on whatever minimal ethics standards have been set forth in writing.

Many municipal codes of ethics extend conflict of interest to include actions that benefit a public official’s entire family and even their friends. Restricting prohibitions only to oneself and to one’s spouse and dependents casts too thin a net on potential problem areas in the realm of public decision-making. Costa Mesa should have a look at what can be done to prevent this sort of situation from reoccurring, and Amburgey should sit out the vote on his son’s project when it comes before the council.