Ethics

By Althea Polanski

Respectful, responsible, ethical leadership must once again be brought back to Milpitas City Hall. I am committed to bringing back the Code of Ethics developed by the citizens of Milpitas

Althea Polanski had the privilege of representing the City of Milpitas on a panel at the League of California Cities annual conference on ethics in government. It was refreshing to see so many cities throughout California embracing ethical government and seeing the need to develop their own code of ethics. Councilmember Polanski was proud to share how the people of Milpitas brought forward the tenants of the code and were working to ensure the process would be fair and open to everyone.

Sadly, after the election of 2004 and in early 2005, the Code of Ethics and all of the hard work accomplished by so many good people in Milpitas was eliminated by the current council majority. The report on the process, recommendations for improving the process and a survey of Milpitas residents to share how they felt about the 2004 election was never received by the city council. The current council majority did not want to hear the report, did not want to hear from the residents and did not want to continue ethics in our city.

The state legislature recently passed AB 1234, mandatory ethics training for all elected officials in the state. Mayor Esteves and I had already implemented ethics training with the assistance of former Vice Mayor Dixon. Milpitas was ahead of so many in the state in requiring ethics in government. Now we must work to bring ethics back to city hall. A mandatory two-hour training every 2 years is not what our citizens want or deserve. Elected officials should provide ethical leadership daily and be accountable to our citizens. I am committed to bringing back the Code of Ethics developed by your fellow citizens.