New Year, New Ethics Leadership
When Benjamin Bycel resigned as head of the Office of State Ethics director in July, it was apparent that the time had come for a change. He resigned after the Citizen’s Ethics Advisory Board unanimously approved a critical assessment of Bycel. Under his leadership, the entire office had been targeted for negative attention by legislators and the media.
For nearly five months following his departure, the ethics office stayed afloat thanks to a core group of employees and a temporary interim director as a permanent director was sought.
Carol Carson began her role as the head of the ethics office in mid-December. Well aware of the problems that besieged the office and her predecessor, Carson’s focus is on the agency’s future.
“I did my due diligence and I know that the office has had some issues,” she said. “My plan is to move forward because the past is not something I can change.”
Just hours after arriving at her new job in Hartford, there was one area of deficiency that appeared in need of instant rectification.
“There is a lot of infrastructure missing here in terms of staff,” Carson said. “We need to get the office appropriately staffed and that means a couple of office assistants, a business manager and another technology expert.”
The ethics office currently employs about a dozen people who Carson maintains have been stretched in the past couple of months. It’s a good point. The need for more employees could have been a reason for some of the criticisms lobbed at the office in the past year, specifically regarding lobbyist data, because there simply was not enough manpower to get everything done.
Carson is, however, impressed with the employees and compared them favorably to those she worked with at her previous position with the Massachusetts Ethics Commission.
“One of the things I’ve noticed here, and one of the reasons I like this field … is that I get to work with a group of committed individuals,” she said.
Carson’s career began as a newspaper reporter. Eventually, she got involved with the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission as an investigator and took part, she said, in many hearings involving the ethics of state legislators.
“In general, I appreciate the investigation process and what that entails,” she said.
While in Massachusetts, Carson gained experience in almost every aspect of the commission’s activities. That should serve her well in Connecticut.
In Massachusetts, she took care of the commission’s public relations and communications function. More recently, she visited many Massachusetts municipalities to educate local officials about state ethics codes.
Her biggest asset, Carson said, is her experience as an investigator into ethics violations. “The process is the same and I really believe, as I did as an investigator, that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect,” she said.
In her mind, the Office of State Ethics does not exist simply to punish those who go astray, but to make sure that lobbyists and politicians know the rules and are not tempted to go astray.
“Most people, whether they’re lobbyists or politicians, are just like everyone else in that they get up and go to work every day,” Carson said. “The role of the office is to help these people understand a series of very complex laws. And my role as ethics director is to fairly and vigorously enforce those laws if they are not complying.”
Sean O’Leary is a Hartford Business Journal staff writer.
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