In March, Hartford's Green Ribbon Task Force on Hartford's parks completed its work and presented their recommendations to Mayor Pedro Segarra.
One of the recommendations the Commission made was to hire a “highly qualified Parks Director” within FY 2011-2012.
Now here is the ethical challenge, let me know what you think.
The commission made the recommendation to hire "a highly qualified Parks Director". That recommendation essentially created a new job position. If you were serving on that Commission and made a recommendation to create the new position, could you then ethically accept that new position that you essentially created? It seems like a large conflict of interest to me.
Well, that is exactly what happened last Friday at the entrance to Bushnell Park. Mayor Pedro Segarra announced the appointment of Jack Hale, a GRTF (Green Ribbon Task Force) Member as the Parks Operation Manager for the City of Hartford.
The other issue is the position being created at the same time that Public Works has been decimated by staff layoff and cutbacks. I'm not sure if the hiring freeze still exists, but shouldn't this position have gone before the City Council for approval ?
After the press event announcing the appointment, I asked Mayor Segarra if he thought it was a conflict of interest and his response is on the video below. The audio announcing the appointment has a lot of background noise (
a lunch truck with a noisy generator was running in the background), my questions to the Mayor are much clearer.
I also asked numerous people a "hypothetical" question using the circumstances I laid out above, and everyone thought it was a conflict of interest to serve on a commission and then accept a position created by that commission's recommendations.