Secrecy is Transparency: CoSA’s Orwellian Ethics Review Board

The City of San Antonio Ethics Review Board (ERB) met the evening of Wednesday, June 28th in the Municipal Plaza Building.  If you blinked, you probably missed it.  Actually, if you flapped your eyelids like a butterfly, you probably still didn’t even know it happened.

The ERB is tasked by the City Charter with enforcing and sanctioning violations of the City Code relating to ethics, lobbying, and municipal campaign finance.  Since April 2022, it has met three times to discuss recommendations or potential revisions to the Ethics and Municipal Campaign Finance Codes.

The last major review of Ethics and Municipal Campaign Finance Codes occurred in 2018.

The city claims that SASpeakUp is a citizen’s “one-stop website to participate in City Council meetings, surveys, events and more!”  However, there was no push by it or the city council to seek public input for this review. 

This is one of the very few official municipal functions for which surveys or online commentary are regularly unavailable.  There’s not even a livestream to record.

Interested residents who are unable to attend must rely on sparse meeting minutes. However, those aren’t publicly available until months after the meetings occur. For example, six months passed before the January 30, 2023 ERB meeting minutes were just published.  That’s unacceptable!

ERB members should push for greater transparency via livestreams, public input, greater publicity, or all of the above.  Reviews of the Ethics and Municipal Campaign Finance Codes are important.  Why the secrecy?