2. Ethics Code Revision — Santa Clara adopted its Code of Ethics & Values in 2000 after two years of public consensus building about the core values of a trustworthy government and the ethics standards protecting public trust.
In adopting it, the City rejected the compliance code the City had used since the 1960’s because the City had learned that a compliance code, which requires the government simply to “follow the law,” provided no help to officials and staff making difficult decisions that would build or damage public trust.
The new Code gave the City a common language, behavioral standards residents could recognize and hold leaders to, and a framework for ethical leadership at every level of City government. It succeeded because all the City stakeholders had built it, written it, and refined it. It was an all-hands effort involving residents, Council, Commissioners, Senior City Staff, department heads, and anyone who wanted to participate. It resulted in an all-hands implementation plan and guided the City’s day to day practice for 14 years.
Today, the Ethics Code, now universally ignored, is all that remains of the City’s consensus core values and ethics standards for public trust. After documenting the city council’s failure to follow its own ethics code and the loss of public trust, the Civil Grand Jury recommended an independent ethics commission as a solution.
The Council rejected that solution twice, once in the initial response to
When the Council discussed the Code and Behavioral Standards in 2023, it approved hiring an ethics consultant to review the Behavioral Standards and report back. City Staff delayed hiring a consultant for eight months, finally acting in March 2024 — after three Civil Grand Jury reports had documented ethical and governance failures.
Staff posted the RFQ broadly but sent special invitations to seven law firms. The consultant who got the job is an employment lawyer whose specialty is defending cities against their employees’ lawsuits. Ethics consultants received no special invitation to apply.
In her application, the lawyer wrote that her initial review of the documents was positive and that she expected to build on them—which would have been the prudent approach, respectful of the public’s consensus.
Instead, after working behind closed doors for a full year, she appeared at the March 2025 Governance and Ethics Committee (GEC)—chaired by Council Member Jain, with Council Members Chahal and Park—with a replacement Code, and no review of the Behavioral Standards and Code. There was no public announcement that the Code was being replaced or why. The Consulted first presented the Code in public at an obscure Council subcommittee meeting that meets Monday mornings at 10 a.m. That’s a subcommittee that historically has one or two members of the public attending. Once GEC reviews the Code, and it and staff make suggestions, the replacement Code will be sent to Council with GECs (and 3 votes) already promised. Since Ms. Hardy already is on record for approving the Committee’s work, in general, there you have it. The City has left public input until later when most major decisions have been made.
The replacement is a rules-based compliance code — much like the Code the City rejected 25 years ago because it didn’t help anyone make difficult public trust decisions. It applies only to the seven Council members, leaving out the Police Chief, City Clerk, Commissioners, City Staff, and the Stadium Authority entirely. It requires adherence to ethics laws — the floor, not the ceiling. It abolishes behavioral standards, retaining only eight that govern staff-council interactions, and says nothing about training or accountability.
A compliance document is not an ethics code. It is, based on over 30 years of Santa Clara’s experience, an ineffective code designed to be pulled out of a file cabinet every few years, dusted off, and put back in the drawer.
It’s an escape hatch. When a scandal erupts, the City can say, “Well we have an ethics code. Everyone signs it when they come on board. It repeats California’s laws. We review it every few years and make sure it’s legally up to date. The State mandates that we do two hours of training every few years (or you can do it online.)
This initiative needs a complete overhaul, beginning with the development process, and including the consultant, and public input. The League of California Cities, Guide for Developing an Agency Code would be a good place to start. The State patterned this document on the development process the City used to develop the Code of Ethics & Values.
The City can save a lot of time by doing what Morin Jacobs said she was going to do in her response to the RFQ: Add on to the original excellent Code document and behavioral standards to include the Stadium Authority, independent expenditures, conflict of interest, and other ethics challenges not foreseen in the 2001 Code.