Keep the county's gift ban

Some Salt Lake County employees and elected officials are wondering whether they've gone a bit overboard with ethics rules — particularly with a new one that prohibits them from receiving nearly any gift or free meal.

They've gone so far as to say they find it awkward to appear "so pious" by turning down a small gift or a meal.

Frankly, much of this is overblown nonsense. The voting public ought to be reassured that county officials are now having to explain why they can't accept things for free. After awhile, the people offering the gifts not only will grow to respect that sort of integrity, they will find it reassuring. And when county officials master the art of handling the minutiae of ethics, they are likely to be much more adept at handling the larger, more substantive ethical issues, as well. Those have been a big problem in Salt Lake County in recent years.

When Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York City, he used that philosophy to cut the major crime rate in half. Officers spent much more time tracking down the petty crimes and the vandalism than they had previously, and many of the bigger things took care of themselves.

That's not to say the county's ordinance shouldn't be tweaked a bit. It is difficult to contemplate a sanitation worker, arguably at the lowest end of the public-service totem pole, having to decline a plate of goodies from an appreciative family along his route, assuming that sort of thing still occurs in the 21st century. Perhaps a specific exception could be written into the ordinance for them.

But for the rest of county workers, particularly those at the higher end, there is great value in the exercise of having to consider who is offering a gift and for what purpose. One can argue that a free meal won't persuade an official to vote a certain way, but the person or group offering the meal may indeed be doing so in the hope of currying favor. Rather than trying to parse the level at which a gift becomes a bribe (the old county ordinance did this by setting a $50 limit), it's much easier, and cleaner, to simply ban them all.

That doesn't mean the county shouldn't give more attention to the larger matters, as well. County Councilman Mark Crockett is soon to propose an ordinance that would prohibit an official from voting on a matter in which he or she has a financial interest. The idea is that nobody with a public trust ought to be able to enrich himself through an official decision.

It's a good idea. Loosening the gift ban, however, is not.