Learn laws; do what's right

When elected officials are sworn into office, they take an oath to uphold the constitution and laws of Utah and the United States.

That's a good starting place for elected officials who occasionally encounter ethical dilemmas while serving in public office.

This past week, the Utah League of Cities and Towns advised officeholders "How to stay out of jail" in a workshop offered at the organization's annual convention. The meeting room was jam packed, doubtless the aftermath of recent controversies in Salt Lake County that have resulted in criminal charges for two officeholders and the resignations of others.

Officeholders who attended the workshop are to be commended for learning more about the ethical conflicts that can arrive in public service and the best means to deal with them.

As Ken Bullock, executive director of the Utah League of Cities and Towns, extolled on elected officials, officeholders need to know the law and their respective city or county ordinances. Former Salt Lake City Mayor Palmer DePaulis told delegates that many city leaders have never read the codes. That is a recipe for disaster.

While no officeholder is an expert on every community's ordinances or rules, city attorneys, administrators and department heads can provide a wealth of information about them. Officeholders need to avail themselves to those resources, which after all are paid for by the taxpayers. As the old saw goes, if you don't know, ask.

The difficulty comes when ordinances or laws do not anticipate every situation an elected official might encounter. Here again, it pays to do some homework. Although some issues appear to be novel, it's likely that some community somewhere else has dealt with a very similar problem. Internet searches can glean some helpful information, although it's best to go straight to the source. If Chicago has instituted ordinances that helped reduce certain property crimes, city officials there ought to be more than willing to show off to a fellow public servant.

Some of the dilemmas that have caught elected officials in recent months were matters of shoddy record keeping for some, a sense of entitlement for others and in other instances, conduct that was deemed criminal. In many, if not most, of those cases, there was a clear dividing line between right and wrong. Only the elected and appointed officials involved can answer why they made the choices they did.

In a round-about way, these incidents are a cautionary tale of what can happen when people cut corners — wittingly or unwittingly. The hope is that current elected officials will learn from the mistakes of others.