SAN DIEGO - The San Diego City Council approved a plan Tuesday to require ethics training for elected officials and some other city employees and volunteers.

The training program will be mandatory for all city employees, consultants and appointees who are required to file a statement of economic interests, including the mayor, City Council members and their staffs.
They will have to complete an ethics orientation program within two months of taking their jobs, then will undergo refresher courses every two years, said Ethics Commission Chairwoman Dorothy Leonard.

The Ethics Commission will manage the training and maintain records.

Consultant Craig Dunn, a San Diego State University ethics professor, will conduct the sessions. He said the training will have a "values-based" approach, so that participants can make their own decisions instead of having a set of forbidden activities.

Participants will be given ethical principles, such as "Do not place private gain over public good," and "Avoid all appearance of impropriety," to help them resolve moral dilemmas on their own, Dunn said.

They also will be taught about institutional pressures, "which may lead to lapses in moral judgment and thereby behavior," Dunn said.

"It's naive to think that knowing right from wrong is enough," Dunn said. "We have to understand the pressures that we might be under, pressures to accept gifts even."

The council's 7-0 vote, with Byron Wear and Jim Madaffer absent, amends City Council policy to add the ethics training requirement.

"I think the training regime sounds very sensible," said Councilman Scott Peters.

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