Conflicts in Public and Private Planning Ethics


Conflicts in Public and Private Planning Ethics	.
Carol D. Barrett, AICP	Author Info

Abstract

All planners certified by the American Institute of Certified Planners operate under a single Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, yet professional planners often disagree on the interpretation of the Code. Between public and private planners, the disagreements are often pronounced. This paper explores aspects of this conflict and suggests ways for addressing problems.

Examples

Conflicts often arise in planning practice between the roles of the private and the public planner. Examples follow.

Grocery Store
You are the consultant hired by the City Planning Director to analyze the potential market for a new grocery store in a low income community without a substantial grocery. A federal grant is in sight to construct a shopping center including a supermarket. You are instructed to push the definition of "potential market" to its limits. What should you do?

Comprehensive Plan
The City has proposed a detailed Request for Proposals (RFP) for a comprehensive plan. It does not include any information about how much money is available although consultants are requested to submit a cost proposal. You are a consultant interested in the project. By checking the City's adopted budget, you are able to determine how much money the planning department has available for consultant studies this fiscal year. You believe the budget to be inadequate. You respond to the RFP and submit a cost proposal in line with the available budget. You assume that, if you are successful, you can always whittle down the number of deliverables required in order to make some money.

Serving the Client
You are an attorney who is also a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). When representing the client, how do you also ensure adherence to the primary AICP Code requirement to serve the public interest?

Indian Artifacts
You are a public agency planner concerned with protection of several Native American artifact sites. A major public works project is planned for nearby and you have hired a consulting firm to identify the best construction practices for minimizing impact on the site. The consultant report hedges its bets and identifies a range of measures. The consultant acknowledges that there is no clear single choice since there is little practical experience comparable to these circumstances. Under pressure from your supervisor to get the job done, and from your peers to protect the history of the community, you select the most extensive, expensive practices and cite the consultant as the source. The consultant sees your version of the final report and is truly distressed. He feels that his work was misrepresented. You feel like your approach, conservative in nature, was the most appropriate given the fragile and irreplaceable nature of the resource.

Recycling the Consultant Study
As a consultant, you prepared a economic development strategy for a city. Nothing much happens. There is significant turnover among the advisory board. A new economic development director is hired and another consultant is engaged to undertake a similar piece of work. As a matter of curiosity, you request a copy of the final report prepared by your colleague. You are dismayed to see that a large portion of the report looks to have been lifted wholesale from your work. You are furious. You feel that your work was stolen. From now on, you decide that you will insert a paragraph in all your documents which limits the reuse of your work by others.

Exploring The Examples

At the national conference in Boston, the panelists and session participants explored these scenarios and reflected on the following concepts:

Grocery Store

Serving the public interest as a binding principle defines aspects of a debate about potential courses of action, but does not define a single acceptable course of conduct. A planner seeking to expand choice and opportunity (also an adopted element of the Code) might well justify a series of decisions which advance the likelihood of providing a grocery store to an underserved neighborhood. While the Code and its attendant advisory rulings preclude "cooking the numbers" to achieve a predetermined result, exploring different assumptions which could result in varying results is not unethical. What would result in more direct ethical conflict would be a failure by the consultant or the city to clarify the assumptions which allowed extremely favorable conclusions. Both the consultant and the client have a duty to make these assumptions clear.

Comprehensive Plan

A sometimes amiable, but altogether awkward relationship exists between public planning agencies and the consultants serving them. This "dance" requires the consultant to insist that the budget is always inadequate. And the public planner is often vague about the job requirements, hoping to derive guidance from the consultant RFP. Aggravating the relationship is the knowledge that similar professionals such as engineers and architects are exempt from such haggling because of state legislation which precludes selecting such consulting assistance based on price. Often planners are classified differently and so must compete based on price as well as other considerations. The vagaries of the public purchasing system leave consultants playing games regarding true costs and price.

Serving the Client

An attorney who is an AICP member stated that the requirements to serve the public interest and those of the client are often in conflict and as an attorney, he is required to honor requirements of the law before those of the Code. He is relieved that no one has ever challenged him on the point.

Indian Artifacts

The misuse of information is a serious breach of conduct. Failure by the public planner to disclose complete information. Information must be full, complete, and accurate. One could urge decision makers to adopt a conservative approach to conservation based on data as opposed to presenting only a single approach as scientifically based.

Recycling the Consultant Study

For years, public sector planners have watched "their" data, projections, and recommendations be reconsidered, reformatted, and repeated for public consumption in the guise of consultant studies. One might be tempted to smile now that the shoe is on the other foot. But such smiling would not be wise. In point of fact, if a report was prepared with public funding for a public agency, then the information is public. While another consultant should not have plagiarized the work and should have indicated all sources consulted in the preparation of the report, it is completely inappropriate to suggest that public data is confidential. The public agency should be more vigilent in the checking the quality of work submitted by its consultants. In the worst of all cases, the public sector might not even know that it had paid twice for the same information. The second consultant has certainly failed to meet the principle of treating the work of colleagues fairly.

Solving the Problems

Most of the language in the Code of Ethics seems to allow for the flexibility for both consultants and public planners to find language supporting different courses of action in the same circumstances. This may be attributed to a number of factors. One, planning as a profession is a "big tent." Trying to devise a simple Code is impossible if it is to apply to the practice of so many disciplines. Second, the Code really seems to envision the planner functioning primarily in a mode of technician. This role is no longer consistent with how many planners see themselves. The Code is in need of revision to make it more relevant to current practice.

What can be done?

Additional advisory rulings are needed which help explore some of these issues in the conversational, example format which distinguishes the rulings from the Code. The last ruling was issued in 1991. Efforts to stimulate debate on the topics are also warranted. The Private Practice Division of APA has invited authors to write on this subject to help stimulate discussion. Finally, the 60 hours of recommended professional development should include at least two hours of ethics training annually to help refresh everyone's memory regarding the scope and importance of ethical principles for planning.

Carol D. Barrett, AICP
Principal Planner
City of Austin Planning
Environmental, and Conservation Services Department