The Courant reports on the the difficulties in changing the culture up in Hartford with Citizen’s Ethics Advisory Board. At the helm, Ben Bycel, revels in a watchdog role that causes some state lawmakers to be a little more circumspect. The Ethics board was created by the legislature in 2005, following the Rowland administration scandals. Bycel was hired to set up the department, and after some clashes with the entrenched way of doing business in Hartford, he has largely succeeded, at least, according to him. But Bycel, who set up  the ethics agency in Los Angeles, knows that it is inevitable that he will be fired not too far in the future.

He said the agency can’t become intimidated by official resistance. He added that this “pull-no-punches” approach got him fired in Los Angeles - after original members of the ethics board were replaced by political opponents who sought his ouster - “and it’s going to get me fired here.”

Bycel elaborated: “I would hope that the legislature would name the kind of board members they have now” when terms come up for renewal, but “I don’t think that’s going to happen. … I don’t think that the general sense of the legislature is [that] they truly understand what I do for a living here, and what we [as an office] do for a living.” He did say, hopefully, that “I think we could educate them.”

Bycel in fact is touching on the strife that is developing over the proposed ethics code revisions in Norwalk. There are some who clamor for an ethics panel to be made up of appointees. There are some who propose that the panel be comprised of council members. At the heart of the issue, as it is apparent at the state level, is that either or, is a more an issue of semantics, as long as legislators control the appointments the board, it is just a matter of perception.

The Bycel led board does show that bringing someone from the outside is the right approach. You can’t expect anyone to rule on ethics charges when they have connections to those that are involved.

“I don’t want to have any personal relationship with anybody in state government at all.”

“I come as an outsider. I don’t want this place to be part of government. We won’t do the job that the people wanted done … if we’re too cozy with anybody,” Bycel said.

source: Courant, Brash Ethics Czar Revels In Role :Self-Styled Outsider Drawing Notice, By JON LENDER,April 22, 2007