Yakima City Council member Sonia Rodriguez plans on introducing ethics code for the council

Today’s Yakima Herald reports that Sonia Rodriguez will introduce a binding code of ethics at the next council meeting July 7th. Bravo!! This is timely and sorely needed. Besides the recent Open meetings Act fiasco that Rick Ensey, Kathy Coffey, Bill Lover and Micah Cawley recently orchestrated, the newspaper points out a model ethics code would expressly bar council members from disclosing information from closed council sessions. Sonia foresees an ethics committee to censure or punish violators. Great stuff. And a very important issue.
We all know that there are several council members that are real tight with Bruce Smith, editor of the Yakima Business Times. (Bill Lover, Kathy Coffee, Rick Ensey for certain). These council members all have pretty low ethics standards. Their close association with B.S. brings into question how much information from executive session that they pass on to the puppet master. Here’s an example:
About 2 or 3 years ago (when I was still on the council) we went into executive session to discuss the city manager’s performance review. Some real sensitive stuff was kicked around at this meeting and Bill Lover reported it all to Bruce Smith at one of their coffee shop meetings. Smith then published an editorial about the executive session discussions without naming Lover as his source. Lover later admitted he had made the disclosures to B.S. and he was kind of irked by the fact that his pal Bruce would actually write a story about the confidential information.
This would be a clear violation of an ethics code that Sonia is proposing. Had we had that then, perhaps we could have censured Lover and maybe diminished Bruce Smith’s entanglement with the City Council. The fact remains that Bruce Smith’s presence is lurking in every executive session the council has. As long as B.S. maintains his influence and his access to even one council member, the council will never restore trust with the public.