This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Leaders of the Utah Transit Authority continue to struggle with the idea that their taxpayer-supported agency exists to serve the public interest, not to provide development bonanzas for their friends, business associates and, worst of all, fellow board members.
The agency has been dealing with ethics issues for several months and has sounded one tone-deaf note after another. The latest is a proposed revision to its ethical standards that would do little to reassure the public, let alone UTA riders, that their needs are first on the board's agenda.
Members of the public transportation board last spring pushed their then-colleague Terry Diehl into resigning from the governing body after his abortive efforts to buy and develop land near a planned FrontRunner commuter rail station were criticized as possibly illegal by a legislative audit. The matter has since become the subject of an attorney general's investigation.
But it was clear that the other board members, including Chairman Greg Hughes, also had to be pushed into taking that action. Because Diehl had disclosed his interest in the property and did not actually cast any votes on any decision that could have personally enriched him, Hughes and Diehl both claimed, there was no real violation of the law.
The board even provided Diehl with a potential windfall of a parting gift. After a closed-door meeting, the board voted to exempt Diehl from the rule that would ban former board members from UTA-related business deals for a year. It's an exemption that Diehl has said he may well make use of.
Clearly, the attitude of the UTA board is to take cosmetic steps to make it appear that it has set a high ethical standard for itself and its members. But real action to remove financial conflicts from each board member's portfolio has yet to be taken.
The latest draft of board standards would prohibit a board member from being part of a development deal in which UTA is a partner. But many such projects, such as the one that led to Diehl's troubles, would not be affected by such a rule because, often, UTA is a neighbor, not a participant.
The new policies also do not prohibit board members from using their insider knowledge and connections to buy into developments that would be made more valuable by future routing decisions the UTA will make. It only insists that such conflicts be disclosed and that, in some cases, members abstain from voting.
Clearly, when it comes to understanding that appearances matter in the conduct of public business, UTA board members keep missing the bus.