The spirit of an open, respectable and honest student government should always be free of deceit, hypocrisy and conflicts of interest in order to ensure trust and accountability.
Unfortunately, the ASUO Executive may not be living up to the spirit of that contract, which it makes with thousands of constituents each year.
On Feb. 6, the Emerald published an article investigating whether ASUO Vice President Eddy Morales participated in the Executive budget recommendation for ASUO Legal Services. At issue was whether his potential participation in the budget would introduce a conflict of interest for Morales, who is currently being represented by the group while he faces assault and criminal mischief charges. The question: Was Morales consciously worried about the perceived conflict of interest accompanying him setting fiscal policy for a group that, at this time, is technically working for him?
ASUO spokeswoman Taraneh Foster told the Emerald that Morales had no role whatsoever in the recommendation.
“Eddy hasn’t even looked at the Legal Services’ budget because he wanted to make sure that there wasn’t a conflict of interest,” Foster told the Emerald. “There’s nothing shady going on.”
At the time, the Editorial Board recognized Morales’ efforts as legitimate, honorable and in accordance with the imperative ethical constraints that public officials necessarily assume.
The issue recently got a bit murkier, however, pushing the Editorial Board to question whether conflicts of interest are even considered in EMU Suite 4.
At last week’s ASUO Student Senate meeting, where senators approved the ASUO Programs Finance Committee’s budget recommendations, Emerald Editor in Chief Brad Schmidt questioned why Morales would have no problem working on the Emerald’s budget recommendation — given the extensive reporting the paper has done on his pending charges — while at the same time recusing himself from the ASUO Legal Services’ budget. The Executive had already vetoed the Emerald’s budget once (the only veto among more than 120 student groups) and recommended that the Senate reject the PFC budget based in part because of the Emerald’s budget allocation. In the end, the Executive’s arguments were overwhelmingly rejected by the Senate.
Morales responded, saying that he had not recused himself or even considered the possibility of a conflict of interest. Instead, Morales said, the Legal Services’ budget was left to ASUO Controllers because he had other budgets to consider.
His statement clearly contradicts what Foster, who speaks for Morales, told the Emerald just weeks before about his decision regarding the conflict of interest. And it begs the question: Was a conflict of interest even considered as a possibility at all?
The issue may seem trite at first, but at heart is a deeper problem: the integrity of elected officials. Conflicts of interest should be zealously avoided at any level of government, and it is troubling that Morales, by his own admittance, didn’t step down from any involvement in the Legal Services’ budget to avoid such a conflict. If controllers needed Morales’ help, what would he have done?
If Morales did, in fact, recuse himself from the budget in the face of a conflict of interest, his actions were honorable and commendable. If Morales simply ignored the issue, however, then the Editorial Board suggests that ASUO adopt a process to determine potential conflicts of interests and address them in a public forum.
Either way, somebody down there needs to get their story straight.