OPINION: Closed-door ethics

Mayor Lionel Rivera's work on the city's deal with LandCo, a failed arrangement that was supposed to keep the United States Olympic Committee headquartered in Colorado Springs, isn't a private matter. It wasn't the mayor's business, it was our business. If there are elements of the deal he can't reveal, then the deal was inappropriate. Nothing about any of this should be a secret. One should hope that our city's Independent Ethics Commission, which is investigating a conflict of interest complaint involving the mayor, would know this. Open government is Ethics 101.

Apparently it's not that simple at City Hall, which routinely fights to keep citizens in the dark. One of the two ethics panel members investigating the complaint, Mal Wakin, wants to meet privately with Rivera. If that happens, it means that none of the city's nearly 380,000 residents will hear what is said except for Rivera and Wakin. Does that sound ethical?

Stephen Hook, chairman of the Independent Ethics Commission, doesn't appear jazzed about Wakin's desire for a private one-on-one with Rivera.

"There is a very strong interest in this from the community, and I think we need to make sure that we do this as openly and in as public a manner as possible," Hook said during a meeting of the commission last week.

Wakin has taught ethics for 50 years and has served on various ethics committees for hospitals and the USOC. He said he supports openness, but he somehow supports openness in a context of closed meetings. Wakin said he'd like to be as open with the public as possible - once he's had a closed meeting.

Nobody in Colorado Springs could possibly fall for this, believing an open process somehow involves a closed process. Closed does not mean open, no matter how much doublespeak one employs. A willingness to be as open as possible in the wake of a private meeting is entirely different than a willingness to be open.

Wakin said he wants a closed meeting because he's "awfully sensitive to the privacy" of individuals under investigation.

That's nice, but no one is investigating the mayor's private life. Wakin has been asked to investigate a public contract, which should have been open for public scrutiny from the moment it was conceived. If the mayor's work on the USOC deal involved his private life, it means he had a conflict of interest. And if the commission's work involves closed meetings, its findings will be worthless.