Conflicts of Interest Board's Enforcement Tsar Faces Off With Violators

The director of enforcement at the city's Conflicts of Interest Board, Carolyn Lisa Miller, is the new sheriff of City Hall, taking on council members for the first time in the board's 18-year history and issuing a record number of fines in one year.

Ms. Miller, a former senior associate at the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher who took a pay cut of more than 50% to join the city's board a year ago, said she is accustomed to handling a heavy caseload and has been working through a backlog of complaints against public employees and elected officials since her arrival.

During that time, the board has written up three council members for conflict of interest violations, the first violations the board has ever lodged against council members. They are among 52 violations issued on her watch, bringing in $58,110 in fines.

In 2006, the board issued 19 violations and collected $36,960. In 2005, it issued 11 violations and collected $37,050.

Ms. Miller's case victories, however, are not considered victories by all, especially among those whose names appear in the public documents released by the board, which explain exactly how an employee or official violated the city's conflicts of interest law, included in the city charter.

The first council member ever cited by the board, Michael McMahon of Staten Island, was cited for letting his administrative assistant type up a poem for his daughter and asking an assistant to call the parents of soccer players on his daughter's team.

He criticized the board's report on his actions, released in May, saying it was a case of bureaucrats trying to justify their existence. A scurrilous, politically motivated letter prompted the city to investigate his office, he said; he was not fined for the offense.

"If this is all they have to put their time into, maybe they should shut down that office," he said at the time.

Ms. Miller, 37, appears unruffled by such responses to her work and defends it as an important reminder that everyone must be held accountable for breaching the city charter.

"We're not in the business of embarrassing anyone in particular, but we really feel strongly that enforcement is part of the board's educational mission," she said. "We treat everybody equally. Council members' names get in. Sanitation workers' names are in." She said she takes the violations especially seriously when officials and employees are found to be using city offices, computers, printers, phones, or faxes to run private businesses or political campaigns. Anyone can lodge a conflict of interest or ethics complaint against city employees or elected officials. The complaints are sent to the city's Department of Investigation and, if substantiated, return to the board. The employee or official found to be violating the charter is then notified.

"At that time we try to work out some kind of resolution," Ms. Miller said.

In many cases an employee or official agrees to admit publicly to the violation and pay a fine. If contested, the matter is referred to the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings.

Ms. Miller, a Columbia Law School graduate who worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York for six years before joining a law firm, said her background in litigation makes her inclined to tell employees and officials that if they do not want to settle their case, they can call for a hearing.

"I'm not sure my predecessors had that same perspective," she said. "The cases often got stalled at that particular stage."

The executive director of the board, Mark Davies, said Ms. Miller is organized and "really gets the stuff out the door." The past performance of the enforcement department was good, he said, but under Ms. Miller, "it's just been raised to another level."