Ethics commission requests more information

The city’s Ethics Review Commission believes City Council members are not disclosing enough information to assure the public that they do not have conflicts of interest when voting on various items. The commission also has complained that Council members’ statements of financial interest are not available on the city website. In fact, those statements are not publicly available except through the filing of a public information request. At its final meeting of 2022, the Council Audit & Finance Committee heard a request from Betsy Greenberg, who sits on the city’s ethics commission, who asked the committee to put items on a future agenda to talk about requiring the city clerk to post the disclosure forms on the city’s website for elected officials as well as candidates. She added that going through the PIR process can take weeks. No member of the committee responded to Greenberg and they did not discuss putting the item on a future agenda. Greenberg told the Austin Monitor she would come back to talk about the problem again this month.

This whisper has been changed to correct Betsy Greenberg’s title.