Cheatin’ BLM agent singed at Burning Man

Ethics violations rankle most when they occur close by, when they seem personal. Apparent cheating by a supervisor prompted two employees of the Bureau of Land Management to cry foul over the activities of a supervisory agent at the famous Burning Man festival.

Ethics is a burning issue generally these days. President Donald Trump’s complex business interests, for example, have prompted questions from Congress and from the Office of Government Ethics. Even stalwart Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, promises to look into the Trump International Hotel lease of the Old Post Office pavilion building four blocks from the White House. Two Democratic senators started a probe into non-government email account use by four White House advisers, including son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Unless you are one of those emotionally invested fanatics — pro or con — on Trump, these ethical questions, while important, likely don’t prick you in a personal way. After all, who in Congress is wearing all his or her clothes, ethically?  But when your direct supervisor or colleague seems to get away with cheating, it gets personal, like someone cutting in line.

Anyhow, back to the BLM. It turns out Burning Man, held annually in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, occurs on federally managed land. So the festival organizers must obtain their permit from BLM. Burning Man is no trivial campfire jamboree. Some 70,000 people attend the week-long shindig. The elite arrive by air and live in not-so-counter-cultural luxury, the plebes arriving by microbus and living in dusty tents. BLM officials worry all the cavorting with fire and pyrotechnics at Burning Man endangers the gathered. There’s a big bonfire at the end. Agents make sure attendees clean up afterwards.

Burning Man tickets sold out in 2015, but the agent used his law enforcement status to get three tickets anyhow — for his father, girlfriend and family friend. The Interior inspector general says that’s a violation of the statutory ban on soliciting gifts from prohibited sources, such as a festival you might be policing. Supposedly the tickets came from a block the organizers held back for last minute favors. The supervisory agent did pay full price of $390 each, rather than a heavily discounted $50 he first asked for.

He paid with personal funds, but was warned by supervisors it didn’t look good and would probably result in a complaint.

It gets worse with this ethically challenged employee.

• He had subordinates make hotel arrangements for the trio of guests.

• He used on-duty BLM officers to transport the guests around the festival in an official vehicle.

And — get this — he let the girlfriend spend the night in an officially-assigned BLM trailer. It’s no wonder, given, shall we say, the carefree, vestigial Woodstock quality of Burning Man. Lots of rockin’ vans. The IG made no moral judgment. But unfortunately, shacking — or allowing use of official lodgings by any visitor — was a violation of the operations plan.

Few of us would quality as angels. But most people at least try to follow their organization’s ethics standards. (Regulars at Burning Man in fact say self-governance is one of the strong points of the festival). Several agencies distill the many pages of ethics rules into a cohesive-sounding policy. Case in point: This 14 principles of ethical conduct adopted by agencies ranging from the Energy Department to the Marine Corps.

I’ve always felt that ethical people don’t need ethics rules, not if they were raised right. They know what passes the smell test.  The reverse is also true: a thousand-pages of ethics rules won’t stop a cheat.

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