By JIM BARON 

I was going to start this week’s essay with some snide remark about how the ethical climate in Rhode Island politics and government must be pretty sound if the RI Ethics Commission has the time and energy to go after a School Committee member who voted for himself to be chairman and in the process reaped an $800 bonanza in exchange for a whole shipload of more work and aggravation (like defending himself against complaints to the ethics commission).

But perhaps it is a good thing that the commission found probable cause to pursue the complaint against Cumberland School Committee Chairman Frederic Crowley for voting for his own candidacy for chairman and accepting the additional $800 compensation that comes with the chair. It will be a particularly good thing if the commission uses the complaint to start a conversation about the wisdom of rule Crowley is charged with violating, as one of the prosecutors hinted last week might be the case.

Because what is clearly needed in this case is an exception to the rule.

Our increasingly by-the-book, no exclusions, zero-tolerance society has become downright hostile to the concept of exceptions to the rule, especially when it comes to big-wig public officials.

But every exception to a rule is not a loophole.

An exception does not necessarily water down or weaken a rule. An exception can actually improve a rule, make it better, stronger. It can make people more willing to readily obey that or other rules because the exception can restore reasonableness or at least remove silly excesses that encourage disrespect for and, ultimately, defiance of, rules and even law.

It is a good rule – a VERY GOOD rule – that public officials may not take official actions that benefit themselves or those close to them financially. It is hard to imagine any honest person who would want to see that rule harmed in any way.

But applying that rule to an internal election where a School Committee or City Council reorganizes itself and selects a chairman or president – or where the chambers of the General Assembly choose a House Speaker and Senate President – even if those jobs (as they should) come with extra compensation, doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Sticking its nose into who someone votes for in an election among a handful of people on a board or committee, even if that someone is voting for him or herself, doesn’t seem like the kind of thing the Ethics Committee should become involved in.

If a person gets elected chairman then tries to get the chairman’s salary bumped up, then yeah, at that point, throw the book at him. But in the case where compensation for a position is already set, and somebody from among the membership must get elected to that position, then the ethics commission should stay out of it, allow the members to vote and let the chips fall where they may. If there is an election, it is not ethically wrong to vote for yourself.

The Ethics Commission’s stand that a board member is not prevented from voting for him or herself as long as he or she waives the extra compensation is disingenuous. Being the chairperson of a School Committee or president of a town or city council is a lot of additional work and responsibility. They deserve extra compensation and in almost all cases earn every penny of it and more. If we expect conscientious hard work from our public officials, we shouldn’t begrudge them fair compensation. But somehow we have accepted the notion that it is more noble if they work for free (as, it should be noted, the members of the Ethics Commission do.)

When I talked to Brian Kelly, the guy who filed the ethics complaint against Crowley, he argued that allowing an official to vote in his or her own interest puts us on a “slippery slope” that we should stay away from. (Pawtucket readers will remember Kelly as the former chairman of the Pawtucket School Committee.)

“If a vote is so close that the leadership candidate needs to rely upon (his or her) own vote for victory then perhaps there needs to be greater effort at building bridges and a consensus among all members as to who should lead the body,” Kelly reasoned in an e-mail explaining his stand.

That strikes me as being a bit to purist to be practical in politics. Which is why a clear exception (a proposed amendment to the Ethics Code could begin “Except in the case of official boards that elect their own leaders…”) is the way to go. It could move us off the slippery slope of interpretation or extrapolation and make plain the point is to have unfettered leadership elections, not to allow officials to take actions that enrich themselves.

Kelly, who has filed no fewer than six complaints against Crowley with the state Attorney General’s office, mostly alleging various violations of the Open Meetings Law, is clearly watchdogging the school board chairman, but he insists there is nothing personal between them.

“At what point do you hold your public officials accountable?” Kelly asks. He said he has been watching Crowley since he was first elected chairman by secret ballot (that doesn’t count as one of the six because Kelly says he didn’t file a complaint).

As an attorney and former member of the General Assembly, Crowley should be more careful about observing the Open Meetings Law, Kelly said.

“Either he doesn’t get it, or he doesn’t care,” Kelly said of Crowley.

While Kelly’s complaint is specific to Crowley the Ethics Commission probe shouldn’t be. The commission has its own investigators and the power to initiate its own complaints. If it does pursue the complaint against Crowley, as it has found probable cause to do, it has a duty to fairness to determine which other officials have done the same thing – there have to be scores of them, from the chairman of the School Committee of the smallest town in the state to the powerful Speaker of the House and Senate President, and treat all of them equally. It can’t just pick on the Cumberland School Committee chairman and let the big guys go free.

I asked Kelly if he voted for himself to be chairman of the Pawtucket School Committee, but I know the answer ahead of time. Yes, he did, but it was OK back then. The eminently reasonable position of the Ethics Commission at that time is that it was "routine" for elected and appointed officials to participate and vote in decisions to elect themselves as the Chair of a public entity, particularly when the compensation had already been set.

Ironically, the commission didn’t change it until it was asked for an advisory opinion last year by Crowley himself.

 ***

Gov. Donald Carcieri got blasted in this space a year ago for holding a big mid-December event at the Statehouse, where he lighted a big decorated tree and calling it a “Holiday Party” where a “Holiday Tree” was lit.

Well, fair is fair, and Carcieri should get credit for this year making no bones about the fact that he and First Lady Sue Carcieri were lighting the Statehouse “Christmas Tree.”

It isn’t easy for a political figure to swim against the tide of political correctness, even in so obvious a case as this. So, huzzahs to Carcieri for letting Christmas be Christmas.

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