Title:چالش های اخلاقی برای مشاوران برنامه ریزی

۱۱-۱۵-۲۰۱۲ این وب‌کست فقط برای مشاهده در دسترس است، برای اعتبارات AICP CM قابل استفاده نیست. ارائه دهندگان: KK، Polly، Jerry Weitz بسیاری از سوالات اخلاقی برای برنامه ریزان اغلب شامل تمرین خصوصی می شوند: • به عنوان یک مشاور برنامه ریزی، آیا قرار است به عنوان بخشی از بازاریابی برای برنامه ریزان بخش دولتی که مشتری و/یا مشتریان بالقوه هستند نوشیدنی بخرم. ? • مدیر بازنشسته برنامه ریزی شهری به عنوان مشاور در یک شرکت برنامه ریزی خصوصی استخدام می شود. اولین پروژه او پاسخ دادن به RFP از کارفرمای سابقش است. آیا این یک درگیری است؟ • یک شرکت مشاوره برنامه ریزی اغلب با استفاده از مشاوران فرعی که به طور خاص برای کار واجد شرایط هستند، پیشنهادات خود را ارائه می دهد. وقتی قرارداد می گیرند، کارمندان کمتری را به پروژه اختصاص می دهند. پیامدهای اخلاقی این عمل چیست؟ این بحث میزگرد تعدیل شده، موقعیت‌های مشترک برای مشاوران خصوصی (در زمینه‌هایی که اغلب شامل برنامه‌ریزان بخش عمومی نیز می‌شود) را از دیدگاه‌های مختلف، با در نظر گرفتن چندین متغیر بررسی می‌کند. از اعضای حضار نیز دعوت می شود تا سوالات اخلاقی خود را به صورت الکترونیکی برای بحث در پنل ارسال کنند. این جلسه شرکت کنندگان را با استانداردهای رفتار اخلاقی مطابق با آیین نامه اخلاقی و رفتار حرفه ای AICP و نکات ظریف کاربرد مناسب و مسئولانه این آیین نامه آشنا می کند.

قسمتي از متن فيلم: Listen only mode hello my name is benjamin lee and i just want to welcome everyone it is now 1 pm so we’ll begin our presentation shortly today on november 15th we’ll have our presentation on ethical challenges for planning consultants for help during today’s webcast please feel free to type your questions in the

Chat box found in the webinar toolbar to the right of your screen or call 1-800-263-6317 for content questions please feel free to type those in the questions box and we’ll be able to answer those after the presentation and during the presentation here is a list of the sponsoring chapters divisions and universities i

Would like to thank all the participating chapters divisions and universities for making these webcasts possible these are the list of upcoming webcasts to register for these upcoming webcasts please visit utahapa.org webcast and register for your web webcast of choice we are now offering distance education webcast to help you get your ethics or

Law credits before the end of the year these webcasts are available to view at utahapa.org webcast archive to log your distance education sim credits go to planning.org cm select activities by provider select apa ohio chapter then select distance education and select your webcast of choice follow us on twitter like us on facebook

And we also upload the recorded presentations on youtube to log your cm credits for attending today’s webcast please go to planning.org cm select today’s date november 15th and then select today’s webcast this is available for 1.5 cm credit we’re recording today’s webcast and it will be available along with a six slide

Per page pdf please email planningwebcast.yahoo.com for the presentation and at the at this time i would like to introduce kk who who will introduce our uh presentators for today thank you welcome everyone we’re going to uh switch over here and pull up today’s powerpoint presentation and just at the

Beginning i want to tell all of you if you’re listening to this and thinking oh my gosh i’m not a planning consultant i’m not going to get anything out of this i want to let you know that that’s not actually the way we have a plan so

What we are hoping is that while this is planning ethics uh for planning consultants but there will also be a lot that you can take away if you’re not a planning consultant if you’ve ever wondered how our brain works and what you need to know when dealing with planning consultants so if you’ve

Secretly harbored a desire to be a planning consultant um hopefully there’ll be some things in here that appeal to you and i also wanted to to just give you a little history on this this is something that has been an interesting subject for me for a while and we are

Kind of building on a session that we have done previously where i was exploring whether there are different sets of ethics for private sector and public sector planners and the conclusion that we reached at a session i did at the indiana conference is no it really is the same set of ethics

We really do look at it the same way and i’m wondering now all right hopefully you can see this powerpoint screen i could and let me there we go there we go all right let me just introduce my fellow participants today not sure why that took so long to pull

Up folks sorry thanks for listening to me ramble um as ben said my name is kk gearheart fritz and i am from indianapolis indiana where i am a consultant a one-woman firm joining me today are folks from two other parts of the country we have paulie carolyn holly is from las vegas nevada

And has promised me that not everything that happens in las vegas has to stay in las vegas but she will be talking a bit about some of her life as a planet consultant holly just retired last year but had spent 28 years in the private sector as a planning

Consultant and also had done six years in the public sector before she retired so she’s seen both sides as of i and paulie is you will know faict so we’re really honored to have her as part of this a long time member of the private practice division joining us is jerry white from

North carolina and jerry wears a couple different hats he is the president of his own consulting firm and he is an associate professor at east carolina university so he’s also looked at ethics from different viewpoints before and jerry is also faict and we are delighted to get together again and explore this issue

So because this is sponsored and was created originally by apa’s private practice division i just want to make a plug for you to join at least one division because it’s a great way to network if you have always thought about being a consultant if you have considered

Wanting to find out more about economic development working with the divisions is a great way to do it and it’s a great bargain particularly for students and new professional members at only ten dollars um i also wanted to repeat that this is a session that we had done previously at

The 2012 apa national conference in los angeles so if you did count the epic session from that national conference this same session you can’t double count it and i also just wanted to extend thanks to the person who got this going originally and that was our acting chair for the private practice division

Deborah myerson and deborah’s contact information is up on the screen there should you want to volunteer for something with the private practice division she’s always looking for volunteers and ways to get folks involved so let’s talk about our learning objectives for today what we’re going to

Do is really try to look at the standards that we have as planners as certified planners for physical behavior and we look to our code of ethics for that we’re going to be highlighting parts of the code that we think are particularly relevant to situations that planning consultants

Find themselves in again if you are not in the private sector if you are in fact a public sector planner again you can kind of find out what kinds of things we face day to day and then we’re going to be looking at specific situations and look at those

Situations kind of see what ethical issues and concerns might be raised in particular situation and how we would respond to those and the other idea is that we all again kind of think about our reasoning and reflection skills about how we can apply what we learn to our everyday

Ethics and what we encounter in our daily lives so what we’re going to do today is introduce we’ve got six different situations and then we’re going to show you what we think is relevant to those scenarios based on the aicp code and we’re also going to each just say a

Couple words of each situation and that should take about five minutes now it might be helpful for those of you out there to go ahead and pull up a copy of the aicp code of ethics just so that you can look through and see if you agree with what we’re citing

In the code if you’re like me it always helps to have something in writing in front of me that i can look at we will be putting the excerpts from the cold on the screen but again you may just want to pull up a copy so you’ve got that in front of you

As far as the question what we’re asking is that you submit written questions and we will try to respond to those at the end of our presentation so if you could be patient until we get through our scenarios we’ve allowed plenty of time to work through your scenarios that you

Submitted questions and we will try to do those uh in order but some of them may be very similar so we may be merging some of them together so that’s what we’re looking at today definitely time to talk about your own ethical concern engineering so before we begin just some background

On the aicp code all communications that occur with the aicp code should occur with apa’s executive director who is paul farmer he is officially the ethics officer for our profession and just some general advice that you just need to pay attention to what you do or say

And uh this this piece of advice comes from paulie as does the naked picture that we have on the screen here which is basically you got to pay attention to anything that would make your sainted mother roll over in her grave or that you or your children wouldn’t want read about

Yourself in the newspaper or in social media and i think we’ve all seen especially with social media in recent years some amazing with the process with ethics there but you know generally it’s a lot of common sense when we think about ethics so paulie you want to uh

Talk about this naked picture that you have submitted here well he may be naked but the book is appropriately placed so one can’t tell whether he might be entirely naked and yes that is my grandson and my son tells me i can’t use this after he turns 15

Which he won’t do for another 13 years all right there you go so the other thing we want to talk about is that in your own chapters you have professional development officers and your pdo are people that you can go to at a more local level and talk about ethics with

They’re not authorized to actually give you guidance but but they are good people to bounce things off of and to ask for some uh directions like what part of the code do you think this might uh relate to the situation or where do i go

At national that kind of thing so you do have pdo’s who can be resources for you and then the other thing i think that i learned very quickly as a young planner which has been many years ago now is that ethical situations really aren’t cut and dry uh we’ve heard a lot lately

About the bestseller fifty shades of gray and i would be inclined to say there’s probably more than fifty shades when it comes to ethical situations and they’re often just dependent on the point of view that you’re seeing from whether you’ve got all the information in front of you all kinds of different

Things way into ethical situations so keep that in mind as we talk about things today and remember that the code is there to help you try to figure out these ethical moral dilemmas that pop up before us and remember also that the code has two different sections that

We’re going to talk about today there’s actually four sections all together section a of the code is the section of aspirational things in the code they’re not technically enforceable but we’re all supposed to be trying to follow them they need to be considered and then section b is our rules of conduct and

They are the section of the code that is enforceable so today we will be talking about sections a and b i suppose so getting to our first scenario here i am going to go ahead and passed this off to my friend holly and she’s going to walk us through the moonlighting scenario hi

Um i’ll just read it out a planner is employed by city government he or she wants to do private consulting work in another nearby local government jurisdiction while maintaining the current public sector job can he or she engage in private work and if so under what circumstances and precautions

Um and this happens you know like like the it says on the slide times are tough can we afford to turn down work i think that’s a good question um the next slide shows the parts of the code that are applicable to this okay if you could flip it for me thanks um

And it really depends a lot first on what your employer says you need to go to your employer and make a full written disclosure of what you’re going to be doing who’s going to furnish the funds and this is all a promote a proposal until you receive written permission to

Undertake that additional employer and then um also if um unless your employer and it has an express policy but you don’t have to do that but i would advise you still to go to your employer and be open about it even though there is um he can’t stop you um that employer still

Might want to have some input and might be able to give you some really good advice and this boils down um even if it’s in another jurisdiction it may be that you’re doing a lot of work for a developer who is also working in your community or for a consultant who’s

In line to do your comprehensive plan update there’s some of these things going on and so you need to be careful about the appearance of conflict and in that i’ll i’ll open it to other folks but it’s only the the one slide is it or there is there another

Slide with the code provisions on it just that one this time holly okay go back to this okay you want to pipe in you haven’t had a chance to see anything yeah hi everybody uh this is jerry um in my view uh you can engage in in moonlighting as a public sector planner

Uh you can engage in that work as long as you comply with the requirements of rule b4 uh rule of conduct before which we’ve shown there you should also examine whether there are any potential conflicts of interest between your city employer and the nearby locality and one of the ways you

Can do that is by looking at the expected outcomes as paulie indicated examine what the ethical issues are in terms of your consulting project and judge how they might intersect or inter-react with the city’s issues and if you can identify conflicts any conflicts then you can try and mitigate those through

Or by preparing a conflict of interest management plan a couple other things i would mention about this scenario is that number one jurisdiction may matter so all nearby localities may not necessarily be the same in other words there might be some issues with one city that they work

Together a lot or they’re at loggerheads or something like that where that may have a bearing on your decision on whether to participate in the consulting effort another thing you can do is is right into your consulting contract with your indicating that you have a primary employer the city so that you’re consulting

Your client knows that you have other obligations and what is not on the slide here in terms of the relevant code provisions is the preamble of of a2 which says we owe our diligent creative and competent performance of the work we do in in pursuit of our client or employer’s interest so we

Obviously should never lose sight of the fact that we have a primary job and a couple other things like polly indicated check your city personnel policies because they could tell you uh whether or not you’re allowed to engage in that despite what the aicp code says

And another one is it should go without saying but there may be a temptation to engage in some of that consulting work on city time and of course that would be uh wholly inappropriate and not unethical to do that with that said i’ll turn it over to kk

For her her perspective on it well let me just say that and let me tell you all they’re listening that these are all real life scenarios i don’t think i mentioned that at the beginning as we put together this presentation last spring for the conference in los angeles we drew from

Our own experiences and i spent half my career in the public sector and half of it in the private sector with some teaching at a university thrown in there for good measure and i actually have faced this kind of a scenario before and i think the one thing that

That really is something i want to put forth is that you owe some allegiance to your primary employer it’s really important that you do not take something on that has the potential to drag that allegiance that you have to that employer to that job down and you need to carefully

Think about that and as jerry mentioned uh i have some communities where i have worked where they are basically at war with their next door neighbor another community nearby i have some that work very closely together and would see it as a plus if you were also working in an adjacent

Community but i think you have to definitely not lose sight of that stack and it’s tough because being somebody who’s been in the private sector i’ve talked to a lot of young folks who have tried to set out and start consulting and it’s been really tough for them to

Think about turning down work even if potentially you know has some some conflict out there because they really need the work they really need the money but you need to think as planners always don’t lose sight of that big picture the long-term impact that it could have all right

Good let’s go on to our next scenario and jerry’s going to introduce this one for us sure okay this one’s titled public and private client conflict and you are consulting planner under contract to prepare a zoning ordinance for a city and you were on the city government

Planning staff a short time earlier now a developer has approached you and is intent on eventually upzoning a large parcel of land in the jurisdiction for which you are preparing the zoning ordinance the developer asks you if you will take take the developer on as a client and provide quote political advice about

Individual council members and how to proceed with getting the property up zone so what can you do under this scenario and i’ll go ahead and give my two cents work this one is uh rather involved i think there are a number of different aspirational principles as well as

Several rules that could apply here and uh we have up on the screen uh next slide kk yep working on there we go okay yeah there are several uh aspirations that that could be listed here we’ve only listed one which basically in terms of speaks to accepting the decision of your

Client but then we go into more significantly the the rules of conduct so rule of conduct three which essentially is relating to changing your your public position on an issue that one could apply or not and then let’s uh let’s go on to the next one

All right we have two slides on this and the other other rules several other rules potentially apply um not on the screen is number four uh b4 and also rule of conduct number seven regarding breach of confidentiality and then also uh 13 and 14 where 13 relates to intentions to influence via

Improper means and then 14 having to do with using your official power for a special advantage so many many different rules that could come into play potentially on this but let me focus on uh really there’s four so i’ll try and go quickly with this that i think are are important

The first one is b3 where we we can’t accept an assignment from a client uh to publicly add sorry publicly advocate a position on an issue that is adverse to something we had previously advocated so this slide may not necessarily apply but we’ve got to be clear

Uh whether we’re touching on it or not now in this case the the planner would be giving quote political advice and not representing the developer in front of the city so with that said i think it’s a little bit different i’m saying that it’s very possible that one could engage in this activity

But there are uh serious and significant dangers that you might want to be aware of another one which was not on the slide was rule of conduct b4 and that is relates to uh basically outside employment and and moonlighting uh it doesn’t look like this would be applicable because you’re a planning

Consultant but really remember that this says this goes to the gaining permission and fully disclosing your activity and even if this rule before does not apply it would be advisable to go to your city client and say hey this is what i’m thinking about doing what do you think

Will you give me permission to do this and then really decline the assignment if the city is uncomfortable with it and it very well could be uncomfortable with it a few other things on the slide was also cited b7 which has to do with breach of confidentiality

This is probably not going to amount to a violation of confidentiality but remember this developer is interested in political advice and that means you might be prone to observe or share with that developer certain things that while not maybe confidential uh the city council members might not want them

To hear or have you articulate to them so you need to be careful with the number seven as well and then i would mention number 13 which is on the slide their ability to influence decisions by improper means now it would be inappropriate for the consultant to

In any way suggest to the developer that you could use your influence with council members or even worse that you would you would never want to use the code writing aspect of your job with the city in favor of that developer it would have to be of course very clear

That you were not ever going to be able to try and influence the code the regulations the zoning rules in favor of that developer and you would need some kind of an agreement with with the developer that said that so if you work for the developer right into

Your contract and agreement that you would not advocate on behalf of the developer and that there’s no expectation that your code work for the city would be done in any way to the developers favor and i know that’s long-winded so i’m going to stop there and turn it over i

Guess to uh polly for her response yeah i i think you’ve summarized it very well i think the only other thing i i might add to it is um i’m seeing this giganto can of worms if if you take that job even if you have written agreements with both

Clients it’s the appearance of conflict of interest that could damage your your reputation i i figure i’ve got two things i’ve got my health and my reputation when it comes to work and this kind of activity i think could damage your reputation whether or not you have these agreements

Because there might be an appearance that you would be working for the developer in constructing the ordinance to the developer’s advantage even though you wouldn’t um kk what do you say yeah i i think that’s a a pretty good insight i like what paulie said that she’s got her health and her

Reputation because at the end of the day we do need to be able to look in the mirror and feel comfortable with what we see looking back at us and i think that for me is always a good bottom line one of the things that i wanted to talk

About on this one is coming at it slightly different and if we look at rule of conduct number 13 over here it says we shall not sell or offer to sell services by stating or implying an ability to influence decisions by improper me however most of us as consultants are trying to

Sell our services and are trying to show that there is an advantage to hiring us and so what we do is try to uh you know we are we’re able to be hired and we’re often hired to try to influence decisions the key is there that we’re trying to do it by proper

Means not improperly so there’s a real big difference in what consultants should do and what the code warns us against and it’s just improper meaning which i think gets to the heart of this manner so i think that was a big difference that i wanted to touch on there

The other thing going back here and looking at this scenario as i mentioned that you know i worked in the public sector and in fact worked in the public sector first before i went to the private sector and one of the things that i made a

Conscious decision to do when i did go out on my own was i just decided that i would not take on my former employers as clients for a certain number of years nor would i take on anyone who wanted to be represented to my former employers

And that’s something that i just did for my own peace of mind and my own comfort level now that’s not to say that you know when i when i started doing this the economy was in better shape and so i had the ability to stay path

Uh occasionally which i know a lot of you who are trying to to get farms started right now may not have that luxury of saying i’m not comfortable getting in this situation right now but you know that’s a thought again it’s going back to that i’ve got to be

Comfortable looking in the mirror at the end of the day with what i’ve done and who i am and the ethics that i have and so that’s just another thought on on maybe how to handle some of those particularly if you’ve had a relationship with a city planning department county planning department

And are stepping into the private sector also any other thoughts jerry or polly well maybe one quick one just to confirm what you said kk that i think one of the biggest issues here is rule of conduct number b13 and that and that is if you if you in any way

Suggest or imply an ability to influence the city’s code writing process that that to me would look like a pretty clear violation of rule of conduct number 13 as well as probably number 11. right okay good discussion folks all right i’m going to go ahead and walk

Us through this one and let me just start out by saying that my best friend is an attorney so we spend a lot of time kidding each other about her profession and my profession so i do this with with love for attorneys so don’t send me a bunch of messages about that

Okay so in this scenario we are looking at someone who’s a consulting planner they work for city planning department and they’re a zoning administrator the city attorney is a real estate attorney so they have a background in real estate which is is better than some of the attorneys we

Work with who write will by day and then come and represent the planning commission by night but this planner has observed that the city attorney frequently has some private real estate clients and that when there is a conflict between what those clients want and the city the attorney will choose the interest

Of his client to the detriment of the city and he is also again charged with representing the city so the city attorney has a lot of political collect connections in the government that’s probably how he got appointed to that position we are concerned that he would retaliate if this planner raises the issue

Publicly now you are a certified planner you are witnessing this activity what do you do well i think right off again we have to go back to the heart of the matter and that is that we owe allegiance to our employer and that our allegiance needs to be

Consistent with with our service to the public interest as part of that those are underlying huge issues as far as the ethics codes and that’s allegiance to our employer allegiance to the public we also need to make sure that we don’t accept an assignment where

We know that there is going to be some kind of conduct that’s questionable illegal in violation of some rules and we need to make sure that we disclose the interest of our clients or employers and we shouldn’t be participating in any kind of effort to cover up

In this case what the attorney is doing for their own employer now with that being said as far as the attorney’s ethics the attorneys have their own code of it and it’s not the same as what the planner code is and i don’t know the details of what their photographic is

But we can’t supply our planning code of ethics to that attorney he’s not governed by the aicp code of ethics however we are as planners so what we as planners do is what we need to be concerned about with this how do we react to it okay so what do we do

In that situation and i am going to go back to jerry and ask him for his reaction to this situation sure okay well uh there is an obligation on this planner’s part to speak up for the city’s interests in my opinion uh what the city attorney is doing in this case is

Either unethical conflict of interest at least related to this to the aicp code and it may also be actually against the law so if you believe that it is in the public interest that the city not be hurt by the city’s attorney’s conflict then the rule of rule of conduct b2 would

Apply and kku pointed that out which is that we shall not accept an assignment from from a client or employer when the services involve conduct that we know to be illegal or in violation of these rules so even though kk is correct that the attorney does not have to follow the

Aicp code if you recognize that there is a code then we’re limited by rule b2 not to accept that assignment now here’s one of the issues though is how literally do we read rule of conduct b2 because we’re not really in a position of accepting or not accepting an assignment

We’re already in that assignment and so the issue becomes do we do we continue with that assignment and this is one where um it really is a tough choice because uh going back to rule of conduct 19 it appears to make a requirement that you in essence

Uh blow the whistle on the city attorney or that you um that you either in the client consultant relationship or you blow the whistle on the city attorney because the ethical planner must disclose the interest of the city and how they are being violated by the city’s own attorney so that’s rule uh

Rule b19 that we shall not fail to disclose the interests of our client uh when participating in the planning process so i think kk is right to note rules b2 and b19 that are the uh really clear ones that apply here and so in summary um because it’s so difficult of a situation

You know what i’m suggesting is either you maybe decline the assignment quit working for that city or um you know you really have no other choice but to blow the whistle or be silent and this is a case where the choices are so extreme that ethics may

Actually not prevail in this case but one further thing i would suggest is you can always at least talk to the city manager about it and let them know how you feel and what your concerns are and uh in my view there’s a good argument to be made that you would

Discontinue work on this or even blow blow the whistle on the city attorney but that’s such a difficult thing to do given that you would face retaliation or the likelihood thereof all right good thoughts paulie yeah i’m i’m um of the opinion that sitting down with the city manager would make a tremendous

Amount of sense and simply say to the city manager this is in this is an impossible situation for me because i see this going on and i can’t continue to involve myself in the process so essentially work if if you you need to know what your city attorney is doing um and then

Your reaction to what the city attorney is doing uh will determine whether or not i can continue to to be of service to this community i like it yep a couple things i want to jump in and just talk about for a minute is how would we answer this question differently

If the planner that we were talking about was not aitp we’re assuming that that planner that’s part of this that’s witnessing this is governed by the aicp code so let’s say it’s someone who’s not aicp would it matter and would they react differently because they’re not covered by a code

And i think that’s something we need to think about and and let me just remind you that there is uh a set of ethics that apa has for everyone who participates in the planning process so even if you’re non-aicp you are still going to be covered

In a voluntary kind of manner by the aicp code so simply being non-aicp i don’t think gives you an out on this the other thing that i think this really brings to the forefront is that there is a huge difference between something being unethical and illegal

And that we often have those things that might be going on so there there’s often you know what does the law say and um i think it was uh jerry that raised the idea that it could very well be something illegal that could be a state law where it could be a

Local law and so you need to be aware of what those laws are in addition to our code of ethics but those are two separate things so don’t forget that something could be legal but still be unethical or could be ethical however could be illegal so don’t don’t mix those two things up

In your mind because they are really very different things all right good good discussion let’s move on to paulie and our next scenario oh and this is one that happens all the time i get very frustrated between that and the amount of funding that’s available for a project

The city’s request for proposal asks for a local comprehensive plan and it specifies that the plan is to be prepared within a six-month time frame you know the review process alone will take four months leaving only two months to accomplish the public participation tasks and prepare the plan you’ve used

It as impossible to undertake in that time frame however you know that other planning consultants are likely to be on the project in so doing um so suggest it can be done in the time frame even though even if they know they cannot what does your firm do well

If we flip to the next slide it’s absolutely we don’t solicit clients or employment through the use of false or misleading claims harassment or duress and false or misleading claims is just just neon here i am in vegas talking neon um just like the strip hey

Don’t tell a client that you can do work that you can’t do in the time that’s specified by the client and that’s whether it’s a fee or a pro bono and i’m doing some of that pro bono work now so um you just can’t uh you can’t do that even though you will

Be undercut by your competition if your client has has a memory if your potential client has a memory they will remember that firm acts said they could do it but then they had to go back and redo the contract so it took a year and then they

Really were more like two years before they finished the job and they’ll remember that they were told one thing at the beginning and then um had to redo the contract as they went along um again um you that’s just a perfect way of making your firm look bad from from just a

Financial perspective but also um you are lying when you say you can do it and that simply is contrary to the rules of conduct and um should not be done that’s all i can say i just i i i have to say this is a hot button for me um jerry

Yeah yeah this is uh yeah most consultants have experienced something of this sort in their career and i would say under the current circumstance has given to you that your firm should not bid on the contract but i would not leave it there i would not stop there but let’s observe

That we do have these two rules of conduct number 11 and number 16 and i agree with paulie that clearly any sort of if you know the work cannot be done in the time frame and you somehow apply for the job put in a proposal saying that you can you really have

Pretty directly violated both of these rules and another one that’s not on the slide is b12 which says we shall not misstate our education experience training or any other facts which are relevant to our professional qualifications so arguably you do this job the way it is now and you violated two maybe three

Different rules of conduct but rather than say okay i’m going to be ethical and therefore i’m going to lose this job i’m just not going to be able to apply i would not give up on it what i would do is i would contact the procurement officer who issued the request for

Proposal and raised the issue in writing along with my own concern that the work cannot be undertaken within that specific time frame and then i would ask for an extension of the schedule that way if the rfp is amended by addendum then and it provides a better workable time

Frame for completion of the work then i would bid on it if the time frame was not extended then i think again you would violate especially rule b16 to the extent that you were misstating your fax by saying you could do the work within the time frame when you know

Clearly that you can’t but there’s still a rub out there you know we to be ethical you may lose the job and you look at what other consultants may be doing and not all other consultants are aicp and so they may not care what the code

Says or there could be aicp members who will bid on this project even knowing that the time frame is unrealistic but what they’re banking on is the idea that when they get the contract they’ll immediately turn around and ask for a change order and extend the time period and at that

Time the project manager is probably more receptive they understand the project better and its constraints and time frames and they’ll say oh yeah sure we’ll we’ll go ahead and uh and revise that time frame now because we realize it’s going to actually take us longer well

The ethical planner is not going to do that they’re going to try and get it extended up front and if it’s not then let this project go if you can get it extended then go ahead and bid on the project that’s my view all right as

Someone who has a one woman firm i’ve been hit with this one many times and have been asked to do something with what looks like an impossible calendar and sometimes when those rfps would come out initially i would look at it and i would say there’s no way i can accomplish

Something like that so i’m not even going to respond and then i learned eventually that uh competitors were still responding to it and i figured out that i would do basically what jerry was just saying that when i get a situation like this which has something that looks like it

Doesn’t have enough time with it that i go back to the the planning firm the public sector planning office whoever issues it and talk to them about the time frame but then the other thing that i’ve also learned is that sometimes what you initially view as impossible is not necessarily impossible it’s just

Somewhat unusual so that it is possible sometimes to do um a comprehensive plan in you know in a certain number of months that is not normally done if you are willing and you’ve got the commitment to work under a very heightened um condensed calendar and you’re willing to work weekends and evenings

And you’ve got commitments from your clients and you’ve got a very high level of public input and i’ve been able to pull some of those off in the past so i guess i would say is don’t just dismiss it out of hand but like jerry had said

You know go back and say you know i really think it might take more time or if we do this this isn’t normal we have to do this condense that and do that to make it work so don’t necessarily give up on it but definitely give some thought to

What they’re trying to accomplish and talk to the agency about it i yeah i would second that motion and i i might also suggest that maybe the client doesn’t think the review process period is included in the time to prepare the plan and so it might be worthwhile

Going through the the rfp in detail with the client to be sure that that first of all you can’t extend the time and secondly that you have perceived the time period correctly all right very good jerry you want to walk us through our next scenario sure be glad to number five here is

Called disadvantaged group input and you are a planning consultant with a contract to prepare excuse me a plan for a county and also a separate contract to prepare a plan for a city which is in the same county uh you the consultant find that the elected officials of the city are not

Inclined to seek input from a low-income disadvantaged disproportionately african-american neighborhood an opportunity arises for you to meet with that neighborhood and it will be a meeting in which the press is there with the tape videotape and television uh the consultant you do not want to ask the city if you should attend because

You’re afraid that the city is likely to say no so what do you do as a planning consultant in this case and if we go to the next slide we’ll see that there are several aspirations uh aspirational principles here as well as one rule that apply we’ve got three

Slides here so the first one basically we have to provide timely and accurate information on planning issues to all affected persons that principle could apply then there’s a one e which we have to give people the opportunity for meaningful impact and that participation should be broad enough to include those who lack formal

Influence which could apply to this neighborhood then there’s some others let’s see what we’ve got here a2 the preamble to a2 as well as a2a well i meant missed a1f that’s clearly an important one seek social justice give people expand the opportunity for people to participate in plans and recognize the

Needs of disadvantaged and specifically to promote and promote racial and economic integration and then we must urge the alteration of policies that oppose such needs then if you look at principle 2 we owe diligent performance of work to our client however it has to be consistent with our faithful service to the public

Interest so we’re setting up a conflict here between public interest and certain aspirations in the code versus our allegiance to our employer if we go on to the third slide there is um there’s one rule that applies here as well as some other other principles i think a2a is also

In particular important that you have to exercise independent uh independent professional judgment and again going back to your employers decisions we have to accept those unless they are inconsistent with the public interests so do we ditch our loyalty to the client and go ahead although they haven’t really told us

Don’t go meet with the neighborhood but that’s our sense that’s our fear is that they’ll say don’t don’t bother doing that if if you ask them so you have not asked them so then let me mention rule 19 and this is a tough one because is it really applicable you know read it

Carefully and say well it may not be it says that we shall we shall not fail to disclose the interests of our client our employer when participating well we’re i don’t think we’re going to go out and say that that our client is we think is racist

That’s not what this means i don’t think we don’t want to disclose the interest of our employer in that regard but to get to where or how i would handle it i’d say that i would attend a session i would go ahead and meet with the neighborhood and that this situation

Doesn’t does not appear to have any rules of conduct that would be violated if you attend that but then yet there’s multiple principles in section a of the code that do apply and the residents of the neighborhood are low-income they’re disadvantaged mostly african-american and they deserve the opportunity to have meaningful impact

On the planning process and we also need to observe and pursue social justice and so i would try and get creative somehow and and note in this scenario that the city you have a city client and a county client well get creative and suggest maybe if the city ever said well

Why did you go to that meeting when you didn’t ask us our permission to do it you could always say well i’m i’m here as a county representative because you do have a client who is the county and the city is in the county so you can argue

If you had to as a defense that you were doing the work for the county it’s a little bit sneaky uh i call it creative you might even others might call it deceptive but it’s really up to you to decide okay and with that i guess uh whose turn

Is it paulie or kk what why don’t kk why don’t you go you lead in on number six the next one okay sure thing um i i just wanted to go back to this slide because i don’t know how many of you noticed the photo that that

Slide had but i love that illustration and i am from indianapolis that was something that was put in as part of the super bowl art that we did this past year so kind of a fun slide there that i think is relevant to us okay back to the topic i think that

I would probably look at it very similar to what jerry said is that we know that that you’ve got one contract with the city one contract with the county so you’re trying to balance those interests already and you know the right thing to do is to get input from this neighborhood and

You know that if you get that input somebody’s going to find out that you were there because this being taped is being televised it’s going to be news it’s going to be loud so you know if you ask someone’s gonna say no what do you do

Well let me tell you i have a still one child at home who is a teenager and this is an approach that is often used by my team if i ask i know that she will say no so it’s better not to ask mom or dad and to go ahead and do

It and then suffer the consequences and i would have to say that in this case i would probably do the same thing that my teenager would do and that is to go ahead and do what i again knew know the right thing to be and risk that censure by one client

And hope that they will understand that or accept that i’m representing the other client because again we’ve gotten back to some of the underlying things of what this code of ethics is about and it is making sure that we really are letting people um really have a say in what happens and i

Think public input is one of the huge huge cornerstones of this code of ethics and we have to give people a chance to have a meaningful impact so i am and i’m very much a person who does um a lot of consulting with the public in a piece of things

And it’s often my job to sit down with the elected officials and say yes i know this neighborhood’s going to be uh frustrated it’s going to be a difficult meeting they’re going to be unhappy but you have to have this meeting you have to have that input you can’t not have

That input you can’t ignore that neighborhood that part of the city because they have or the more unhappy that neighborhood becomes so i often am the proponent of saying that you need to invite everyone to the table even the difficult people the noisy people the people that others don’t

Agree with because if you ignore them and then wait till later and it comes out as a newspaper comes out on a news story on television or something then everything really blows up so i am awful often dabbling kind of an uphill battle to try to get folks to buy

Into the fact that they need input from everyone and it’s not always an easy thing to do but again i think it’s a real cornerstone of this code that we have all right holly one of the things i like to do and i think you’re you’ve you’ve touched on kk is um to

Write initially sit down with a client and talk about how public input is really valuable that we can really learn something through that process and if we don’t uh get the full range of public input then we’ve limited our ability to know what’s going on in the city and to be able to

To do a good plan these people you you know there’s some thought that they don’t have anything to tell us well it’s my experience and one of the reasons you hired me is my experience that these people do have something to say to us and that we would benefit from that um and

I also agree that there’s um there’s some um real benefit in asking for um forgiveness rather than permission if you know you’re going to get a no the other thing is uh it re some of it depends on your contract if your time and materials contract

Even if it’s not to exceed if it’s time and materials and you charge to go to something your client doesn’t want you to go to then maybe you need to be willing to take that financial hit and so you can go back to the client and say well you know i’m

I’m a human being i i get to um i’m a citizen i get to go to the meeting and listen to what’s going on and i didn’t charge you for it therefore i was there as a private citizen and bring that knowledge back even though you didn’t give me permission to go so

Now i’ll ask for forgiveness uh yeah i hope that paulie i think that’s a very good point to make and that is that if if the city client came back to you and said well i saw you attended this meeting and you didn’t ask us to go and are you charging us for

That then i think you would have to legitimately say well no since i didn’t that’s on my own time i think you have to be prepared to like you said eat those costs as a consultant for your choice yeah good point yeah but you’re also benefiting and maybe

Saving some money all the way down the line by not having to go through as hostile a review period as you might if you had initially taken that input all right very good discussion folks all right we’re going to go on to our last scenario that we have and by the

Way we’ve got a lot of questions that are coming through so we’ve got some good discussion be prepared for that our last scenario that we have for you today concerns affordable housing and in this scenario you are a planner who’s working on a comprehensive plan for a city

The mayor has been in office forever he’s he’s like the lifetime mayor and he has indicated that property owners in an older in-town neighborhood once a property rezoned from single family to office use and the city planner on the city planning director let’s say indicates that the land use plan

Should be changed for this neighborhood to go ahead and show office use for the mayor now you know because of your research that this is mostly a rental neighborhood it is still stable but it is adjacent to downtown commercial and you also know that it’s one of the

Few remaining neighborhoods in the city that provides affordable housing for low-income persons let’s just really mix that up and say that that even though its own single-family residential now that that includes what some might consider multi-family like condos or accessory apartments or duplexes or something like that

And that it is something that people really know they can find something affordable in that neighborhood but there’s not many other places in that city where it’s possible so you’re the planning consultant you’re working on this comprehensive plan you’ve been told by your client hey the nate the mayor says let’s change this

From residential to office use just go ahead and make it off excuse what do you do in that situation well back to what we were talking about in the last scenario a lot of those same same things that we talked about probably apply if we look back here

Um that the social justice idea that we want to expand choice and opportunity for all persons and that we need to promote economic integration that’s affordability so are we going to be working on something or doing something changing this map so that there’s no longer any affordable housing neighborhood in this whole community

One of the other things that we want to look at is that again while we owe this allegiance to our clients we also have to make sure that we provide faithful service to the public interest or to the public so for me i have i i probably quite honestly face this

Situation every time i do a comprehensive plan in a community it seems like particularly if we start talking about multi-family even low density multi-family it’s something that is very unpopular in communities in indiana where i work and i am always in the situation where i have to sit down and work with

The elected officials other local representatives to talk about really talk about the the idea of what would happen if we change this what would happen if there was suddenly no um affordable housing in your community and it often becomes an opportunity for education with that client

And so again we’re down to this idea that the public interest in doing what’s right may not be the easiest thing always it may cause you to have to sit down with your client and say look folks we’ve got to to offer more choices more affordability

And housing and here are the reasons why we want to do it and do some education as part of that and again it’s something that i face all the time and i really i think it would be irresponsible of me as a professional planner to just go ahead and automatically change that

Category on the landis map without really talking it through with my client okay jerry or paulie want to jump in there paulie you want to go ahead um yeah i i guess i would be also looking for some um blending if you will because if the neighborhood is really turning over

People are going to start using their houses for for work purposes that it would be um you really need to work closely with what’s happening in the neighborhood and then try to do something that would uh if you if you can’t manage to convince your client that

That that needs to stay residential that you need to do something to compensate for to to make sure that there are really more when all is said and done more opportunities for affordable housing in the community um if that makes sense jerry um yeah it does and it actually

Is probably a better answer than i was going to give because i i wasn’t gonna go that far but i appreciate your suggestion that if if this neighborhood turns over to office uh then you could even cite an obligation on the city’s part to provide some compensatory housing somewhere else

Some other policy that would make up for the for the loss of affordable housing but to give you my perspective on it it’s pretty much the same as what you’ve heard and that is that the ethical planner is going to recognize that this is an opportunity to advance social justice

And that in this scenario we know the mayor is inclined to reclassify the neighborhood for office and it is debatable but it’s also uh appears to be justifiable in at least in part so as kk had said before i just agreed to acquiesce to what the mayor said and

What the planner suggested that i do the city planner uh i think at minimum should be brought to the mayor’s attention uh the goals of the city and other affordable housing for low-income households and we should also note as planners the policy implications of changing that neighborhood from

Residential to office and the impact that will have on affordable housing so i would definitely outline my concerns but in the end i would be inclined to accept the mayor’s decision as the client of course the mayor himself is not the client the client is more broadly the mayor and city council

So you could argue well i want to talk to the whole council about this issue but after being there being elected for 30 years one would anticipate that the mayor can carry the day if it came to the city council so i think that would be uh

Not wise to try and argue that case uh with the city council and then i would just tack on to that what paulie said a great suggestion which is what can we do to compensate for the loss of this neighborhood because it is an important important loss here okay

Well and could we go back to the last um situation where um we have a meeting with the people in that in that area and ask them what they think sure you might come back to us and say hey i’ve been offered five times what i

Paid for this house if i get that money i can go buy something else somewhere else and i’d be happy to leave um and so we don’t know we don’t know what they’re thinking if we don’t go to them and talk to them all right good well paulie and jerry we’ve got some

Good questions and comments that have come across so what’s been the remainder of our time discussing some of these the first one i’m going to throw out to you is going back to a comment on the appearance of the conflict of interest that we should not even

Engage in something that would give the appearance of having a conflict and one comment that we got was you know there’s always going to be somebody who’s going to be looking for a conflict and seeing something when it’s not there should there be some kind of a qualifier

Um you know if we if we really try to hold that to the highest standard somebody’s always going to perceive that there’s something going on that really isn’t how far do we take that yeah i’d like to chime in on that one i think that’s a very good observation when you say

Avoid a conflict of interest or even the appearance of is an incredibly high standard to accommodate and uh even in the ones even in the scenarios that we’ve discussed here today if you applied the standard that by all means you can’t do anything that will become an appearance of a conflict

Then that would solve the answer one way or the other you would never do anything of the sort that we’ve even said could be acceptable today so i think that there is a the modifier to me is being able to mitigate that conflict and admittedly this is not in the rule but

Uh because the rule says avoid the appearance but if you can if you can avoid that conflict by addressing what would come up and you have a plan that would would manage whatever scenario came up then i think in my own view that’s good enough to meet this aspirational principle

Okay good paulie you want to say anything on that yeah i think i would i would agree with that as well um that if that if you could resolve that in some way and then and then make sure that everyone involved is aware of of how that

Arrangement has been made to avoid that conflict i think that works beautifully because then you’re in a position where you have better knowledge and you might be actually more valuable to the process all right good we also had a question um that is kind of an interesting situation where someone says

What do i do when i’m in a situation where i work for consultants and my boss is telling me to build the time on one job to another job what do i do in that situation and one of my very favorites yeah okay go for it miss paulie

Well it first of all it depends on what the job is if it’s federal funding um sorry you can go to jail for doing that and you need to tell your boss that because that’s called fraud and it’s so it is at least the appearance of of doing something bad and

Should not be done period amen hallelujah yeah and i i’ve had i’ve actually been in that situation at you know one point in time or other over my career and the person that was telling me to do it was not a planner i will say that

But i i told them the same thing that polly said is you know not only is that unethical it’s illegal so i think that’s a very dangerous situation uh that you can get into there i would only i would only add just uh rule of conduct b1 and b2

Illegal or unethical conduct and also inaccurate information and untruthfulness these sounds like violations of rules of conduct to me yep we have another interesting question and this i think goes back to something that i had said earlier about if you worked for the public sector and

Then you leave to work in the private sector how long should you wait before they can be there a client of yours and didn’t there used to be something in the code that addressed that oh i can i can yes yeah i was gonna say yeah there used to be something we used

To have something that addressed that and when the code was revised several years ago that time frame was taken out because there was the concern that it would be too limiting on people in areas where there wasn’t a high number of planners and a high number of opportunities there so

And correct me if i’m wrong paulie and jerry but if i recall it that was the reason that that was taken out of the aic rule of thumb is probably a year you know but it really needs to be what you’re comfortable with and it depends on your situation too jerry why don’t

You go ahead i know you have something there oh well yeah i do remember that that that was a it was either a code provision or it was a what they call an advisory ruling i think it was actually a code provision but it didn’t survive when the code was

Rewritten in 2005 and i don’t know as much as you do kk about how that got changed well i had just having faced that recently having retired from the the regional transportation commission i was involved in the rfq process for them ranking consultants so i figure it’s my

Responsibility not to go to any of the consultants that i um supported or didn’t in that process because that then i’m on both sides of that equation and since it’s a two-year process i’m figuring that i need to wait through that before i contact any of these consultants who have worked

Who who were selected because of my recommendations um and that that’s going to get hokey if somebody calls me i i it would be you know is this something that specifically is rtc work so that would be a whole other question but i do think that there are instances

Where you really do need to to hang around and not do anything for a while yeah and i i think we probably all are saying about the same thing on that one we had another listener who sent us a note and said in in what situation should we be telling

Our clients that we have a code of ethics that we’re supposed to be following is it something we should do with every job uh or is it something that we don’t pull out until we see an ethical situation popping up and i’m curious as to how you both have

Handled that as consultants in the past and assuming then you know that our client might be elected officials or a community that doesn’t have a planner on staff that doesn’t know about the aisup code about it yeah i’ll take a shot at that answering that one i think you know you have two

Basic choices and one is to be proactive or to be reactive and i think as far as what i’ve done as a consultant i don’t think i’ve been proactive enough and i have tended to be reactive and only raise issues of ethics if it came up but i don’t think that’s really necessarily

The smartest thing to do in fact i would advocate for example uh in your contracts you could have an ethic statement of of ethics in your contract have it added as an addendum that you you are an aicp member and as such you’re bound to uh you you owe diligence to employers

And and so on and so forth and go ahead and put that in there and the other thing you can do which goes back to our first couple of scenarios which is if you anticipate a conflict of interest uh to in order to to head that off at the past so to speak

You could have some kind of statement about potential conflicts and try and address them up front uh before they happen so the lesson is be more proactive if you can okay good um here’s a few other ones that we’ve gotten i’ve got one person who said what do we do in a

Situation where we are competing against competitors who are being unrealistic and almost to the point of lying in their proposal do we inform the client that our competitor is lying and that they can’t possibly do what they’re saying they should do wow so yeah now i will jump in there and say i

Think you have to kind of see what it is that they’re saying in the proposal if they are doing something that you clearly feel is a violation of our aicp code of ethics and they are aicp planners then i think clearly it is covered by the code and it’s

Something that you need to probably have a conversation with paul farmer about and get some advice on how to handle it um but if it’s let’s say that you are competing for a project against a firm or a team that’s made up of an architect an engineer and an attorney

That aren’t governed by the same code then you’ve got a slightly different situation on their hands and i think you also have to be careful how you talk to your client i don’t think you can assume that you know more than your clients you know your client hopefully is picked

Up on the difference between the different proposals and how dramatically different they are you might politely give them a heads up and say i you know i really feel like this would not be something that you could do well in that amount of time for example

So we want to you want to be able to raise the issue with your client doing it and without blackening someone’s name because you don’t want to accuse someone falsely if you don’t have all the facts in front of you too so you really need to do your

Homework on this one i think paulie or jerry want to add anything to that uh sure i’ll i would say as i agree with kk that uh the the better avenue would be to uh see if there is a symbol if they are aicp members and you

Believe this strongly and you have the proof you can go that route as to informing the client my first impulse is just that they would probably consider it whining and it would be difficult for you to prove that they were lying so i would be a little reluctant to

With a situation of this sort i would agree with that and i’d suggest that if if this is the kind of thing that happens regularly that you use your proposal to explain what you’re doing for the price more carefully um or or the time period so that the client understands um

The breadth of what’s being offered and that it may be um substantially better than what is being proposed by the the other firms and that then the client can use that knowledge to evaluate um the proposals that the trick is sometimes you’re in a position where um the

There’s you got to take the low bidder um jurisdictions are getting away from that but if that’s still the situation then then then this is happening to you you need to to think about how uh you’re going to respond to future rfps from this jurisdiction you know

Whether it’s a good use of your time okay good um i think we’ve got just a couple minutes left let me make sure that we cover some other information for you real quick and then we may have time for one more scenario again i think you all hopefully know

Where to find the aicp code of ethics i also want to point out to you that if you’re interested in more that there is a toolkit that has and we certainly encourage you to look into that toolkit and also into a really good book that carol barrett wrote some years

Ago and i suppose carol is probably a epic mentor for many of us out there and it’s got some great scenarios in there if you want to take a look at that and that’s everyday ethics for practicing planners i’m going to pop up our contact information if you

Want to follow up with jerry or paulie or i after this and then the last thing that i’m going to throw out for our final scenario today is i’ve got one person who said you know where i work is very much a pay-to-play kind of place you’re expected to make political contributions

If you want to be on the list for rfps and rfqs if you want to be able to operate you’re expected to do this is that ethical to make those political contributions jerry holly oh gosh that’s a hard one i don’t know that it’s i don’t know that it’s unethical if you

Elect to participate in that situation uh but i i don’t like it i think you could stand on principle and say basically that that’s uh political contributions are are not i mean isn’t that a violation of uh what’s that federal statute anyway i don’t like it i wouldn’t do it

That’s all i can say about it yeah i have the same reaction yeah i will tell you as a sole proprietor and someone who doesn’t have a whole lot of overhead money for those kind of things is i just tend to avoid working in those communities i know who they are

I know what they want and i can’t afford the price that it would take so i guess i saved myself an ethical conundrum because i can’t afford to take take part in it but i know that is a very real consideration um and that that is something that does

Happen and in some states it’s worse than others i you know i i suppose the one thing you could do is you could say okay i’m going to give money to both sides and equally support them or you can simply say you know i feel like i

You know have a sit down and a discussion with them and say you know ethically i just don’t feel like i can do this and you may never see another rfp but that just may be the way it is so sometimes i guess what i would say

Sometimes what you have to do is not be the easy thing sometimes it’s not the most profitable thing but at the end of the day again you’ve got to be able to look yourself in the mirror and feel comfortable with who you are and like paulie said you know at the end

Of the day you’ve got your reputation and that is very much what this is the aisp code of ethics are here to help us with that i think is to help us keep that in mind and keep it in line holly jerry and he closed the pot

No just good job and it was a lot of fun thanks for including me yeah i i second that motion all right thank you all very much for participating today and again paulie and jerry and i are available if you’ve got questions uh again don’t forget about your resource of your chapter pdl

And paul farmer at national to resolve those big ethical issues oh hey kk one last thing i know we didn’t get to a lot of the questions and i don’t know if we have any way to preserve those and and share share those or not at least among the

Speakers i would love to be able to see all of those questions that came in if our if that can be copied off of the the webcast i don’t know if that’s possible or we can add spin later about that oh yeah i can save the questions and send it to you guys

Oh that’d be great if you don’t mind doing that then we might be able to follow up with people uh if we want to okay sounds good thank you all right thanks okay

ID: 2KQzi_QAkCE
Time: 1353016075
Date: 2012-11-16 01:17:55
Duration: 01:31:45

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