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Employee?s performing job related ?outside work? ruled a conflict of interest

By Harvey Randall, Esq.

Employee?s performing job related ?outside work? ruled a conflict of interest
Reichel v Water Auth., App. Div., 2nd Dept., 283 A.D.2d 475

Certain employees of the Suffolk County Water Authority (SCWA) also maintained private businesses that offered plumbing services to homeowners. Such services included the installation of water service lines from private property to the water main at the edge of the street.

Although SCWA inspects and approves such installations, it does not itself perform this service.

In response to SCWA's request for an informal opinion concerning its employees engaging in plumbing services involving connecting a residence to the Town's water system, the Attorney General advised that "SCWA employees should not be so engaged, to avoid even the appearance of impropriety."

SCWA then amended its personnel policy and "Rules of Conduct" and prohibited its workers from providing private plumbing services that would require or involve SCWA inspection and, or, approval upon completion.

The Appellate Division sustained the lower court's rejection of the employees' challenge to this policy, ruling that "[a] governmental entity may implement conflict of interest policies restricting outside work by its employees so long as the policy is rationally based and reasonably related to maintaining public confidence in government."

The court also commented that the policy adopted by SCWA "was sufficiently narrow in scope so as not to eliminate other opportunities for the [employees] to continue to engage in outside work."

Full post as published by New York Public Personnel Law on January 30, 2008 (boomark / email).