Wichita ethics board prepares to start; mayor questions potential for abuse during election

After extensive delays, Wichita’s Ethics Advisory Board is expected to begin reviewing complaints next month. The timing has at least one official raising questions about the impact it could have on this year’s city elections.

Mayor Brandon Whipple says he wants to make sure the ethics complaint system isn’t weaponized for political purposes during the campaign.

“My concern after seeing how this has been treated the last year is abuse,” Whipple said during a City Council workshop Tuesday. Whipple is running for re-election and is facing at least one ethics complaint filed by a potential challenger.

After not meeting for seven months, the ethics board has convened three times since mid-December, when the council enlisted Wichita State’s Public Policy and Management Center to lead the board in recommending revisions to clarify the policy and to vet complaints until an ethics officer is named.

“The goal is to make sure that this isn’t political,” Whipple said after the workshop. “That we take this policy seriously and not use it for tit-for-tat type stuff.”

Four complaints have been lodged with the appointed board since the City Council adopted the ethics policy in May 2021. The policy sets gift limits for elected and appointed officials for the first time in city history and gives the board authority to issue fines of up to $1,000.

Ethics complaints filed with the board are not made public. The Eagle obtained one complaint last March through a Kansas Open Records Act request. In it, District 5 council member and likely mayoral candidate Bryan Frye accused Whipple of meddling in the hiring process for his assistant — an accusation Whipple denies and maintains was politically motivated.

Whipple expressed concern that political actors could encourage supporters to file ethics complaints against an opponent, inundating them with accusations they would have to respond to.

“That’s my concern because we’ve seen that type of maneuvering the last year on this,” Whipple said during the workshop.

Frye rebuffed the notion that his complaint against Whipple was improper.

“I filed that complaint way before I ever thought about running for anything else, so I don’t think that has merit,” Frye said.

Frye registered the domain name “bryanfryeformayor.com” in November 2019, records show, but he said purchasing a domain and filing for office are “two different things, obviously.”

Frye said “low blow vigilante-style ethics complaints” have no place in city elections.

“Certainly it has the potential to further damage the public trust,” he said. “We clearly need an environment that is not full of ethical charges and counter-charges because that ultimately is going to hurt our community. The basic goal of this policy and the system is that we want an honest, effective government that serves our neighbors.”

The updated city ethics policy will include revisions that clarify who can and can’t serve on the advisory board and establish a process for vetting complaints when the ethics officer position is vacant.

Once an ethics officer or interim leadership determines a complaint should not be dismissed as frivolous, the accused person will be notified that they have seven business days to respond to the accusation in writing. The WSU center’s Senior Management Consultant Kathy Sexton, who has directed the advisory board as it reviews the ethics policy, said officials won’t be overwhelmed by the volume of complaints.

“If I get 20 [complaints] on the same day, it doesn’t mean I’m sending them all to you on the same day,” Sexton said. “We can stagger those as it is. In fact, we probably would just because we have to have time to sit down and look at each one and communicate.”

The board will also propose a revision to the ethics policy that would allow officials accused of a violation to petition the ethics officer for an additional seven business days to respond.

Sexton has said she expects the board to begin reviewing ethics complaints in February after they have been vetted with the help of outside legal counsel.

Paid ethics officer

The city took no binding action on its ethics policy Tuesday. When the Ethics Advisory Board formally proposes revisions soon, it will suggest that the ethics officer be switched from a volunteer position to a paid one.

“I think we’ve seen that that’s a very difficult thing to find as a volunteer,” Frye said of an ethics officer.

Nine candidates applied for the unpaid officer position and three recommendations were forwarded to the council in May. One candidate was deemed ineligible and another moved away from Wichita. The third said they were only interested in a paid role.

Professionalizing the ethics officer position will ensure they are available to answer ethics questions from officials and members of the public, Whipple said.

The ethics board is creating a new complaint form that requires complainants to provide their contact information and specify which part of the ethics code they think an official has violated.

“It’s not supposed to be a gotcha,” Whipple said. “It’s not supposed to be a political weapon or a way to get headlines. It’s supposed to be pretty much the internal checks and balances to ensure that people aren’t taking advantage of their position.”

The City Council’s ethics policy reform was adopted following a series of Wichita Eagle investigations into unethical behavior by local elected officials.

More revisions

Before the ethics board had received its first complaint, it had already started to deviate from its own rules by selecting three finalists for the ethics officer who appeared to be disqualified by a residency requirement and prohibitions on political affiliations.

The City Council is now poised to drop the residency requirement for the ethics officer, which is in place for all city board members, and loosen its blanket ban on “active members” of political parties and nonpartisan political organizations.

The changes would also ensure Whipple’s appointee to the board — Kelly Schodorf — is qualified to serve. Schodorf, a Wichita lawyer who’s also municipal judge in Newton, would have been disqualified under the original prohibition on public office holders.

A revision would allow appointed public office holders, such as municipal judges in other jurisdictions, to serve on the board and prohibit only elected public office holders and candidates for elected public office.

The ethics policy bans “active members of a political party” from being appointed by council members to the seven-member committee, which the board will recommend clarifying to mean someone who is currently being paid to work for a political party or a campaign, or who is serving as a precinct committee person.

Anyone who holds county, state or national party leadership will be deemed ineligible, along with anyone who is “substantially involved, paid or unpaid” with a campaign for the current or most recent city election cycle. City elections are technically nonpartisan contests.

The original language adopted by the City Council also bars ethics board members who participate in partisan or nonpartisan political clubs or organizations, which Sexton pointed out could include members of groups like the League of Women Voters and other grassroots organizers.

“Nonpartisan could be anybody working on any kind of a school board issue, an election issue with the school policy, a save-the-swimming-pool effort, a school bond issue — any city issue, because city is also nonpartisan,” Sexton said.

“We felt like if we just removed the word ‘nonpartisan’ then it gets to the meat of what you had intended previously with the wording of this policy. But not eliminating from qualification of serving on this board so many good people in the community who work on nonpartisan issues all the time.”

All ethics board appointees will also be subject to a criminal background check as a prerequisite for their service. The board determined that subjecting prospective members to a civil background check would be an overreach.

“A civil background check is essentially a financial check,” Sexton said. “Did you have a bankruptcy? Have you been evicted? Do you have any other financial issues in your history? The board talked about that and just thought you know, personal financial issues are not really a good tool to use to disqualify people from a board that’s working on ethics of current elected officials.”

Frye said he’s glad the city is making progress on its ethics policy and that the advisory board will soon begin reviewing complaints.

“It’s a little later than I would have liked but at least we’ve got that process going,” Frye said.

Contributing: Chance Swaim of The Wichita Eagle