Delta trustees get ethics lesson

Written by Jennifer Wadsworth
Thursday, 17 July 2008

The board that's been sharply criticized for allegedly violating open meeting laws may adopt an ethics code after a training session today.

STOCKTON — Delta College trustees met this morning at a Stockton country club to draft their first formal code of ethics, which in recent months the school’s accreditation commission and the San Joaquin Civil Grand Jury found lacking.

The closest thing the board had to an ethics code — guidelines up until now called “standards of good practice” — left out how to deal with trustee misconduct.

It also lacked a tenet that solely addressed the Ralph M. Brown Act, a law that spells out how public officials should conduct themselves in open and closed meetings.

Trustees were accused by the grand jury last month with at least twice violating open-meeting laws. Some trustees have named as many as five violations.

Today, a legal expert conducted a training session that touched on open-government laws and gave trustees a draft of ethical standards to work with.

“You are an essential link between the college and the community,” school-hired legal counsel Carmen Plaza de Jennings told the five of seven trustees who attended today’s training session.

Trustees are role models who set the tone, vision and policies for the institution, Plaza de Jennings reminded the board and college president Raul Rodriguez.

With that in mind, she warned them that mismanagement could lead to “a loss of respect from the public,” difficulty securing future bond measures and risking the school’s accreditation.

Plaza de Jennings’ disinterested advice as an outside consultant echoed charges made in the scathing grand jury and accreditation reports.

Among additions to the code, the San Francisco-based lawyer added clauses that restrict trustees’ interaction with college staff, expressly define a trustee’s role as policymaker and encourage honesty about conflicts of interest.

The four-page draft also addressed how authority is to be divided among trustees and college employees.

The recently issued accreditation and grand jury reports criticized trustees’ for overstepping their roles as policymakers — basically charging them with illegal “micromanaging” — which the added clause addressed.

Trustees “do not do the work of the institution, they make sure the institution gets the work done,” Plaza de Jennings summed up.

Trustees asked during the meeting about how to separate personal political leanings from their capacity as board member and how where to draw the line between loyalty to the group and individual opinion.

Dan Parises — who this week announced he’ll step down after 33 years as trustee — suggested that only the board president speak publicly for all trustees.

Tracy Trustee Greg McCreary countered that a board member retains rights as a private citizen to espouse whatever political views they like, even it’s to endorse an incumbent’s opponent.

“It may not be nice, it may not be courteous,” he said, “(but as a trustee) you don’t lose your right as a citizen.”

Plaza de Jennings agreed.

Ted Simas and Maria Serna were absent from the meeting.

The new ethics guidelines will go back to the college for staff approval before trustees vote sometime within the next few months to codify the 20 tenets, which once established, the board is set to annually revise.

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