Hadley chief offers shortcut on ethics test
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HADLEY - Hadley's police chief offered to make a mandatory state ethics test a little easier for patrol officers by offering them the answers, according to an internal email obtained by the Gazette.
The online test, which all public employees in the commonwealth must take, is designed as an educational tool that one ultimately cannot fail. The training requirement is part of new reforms to the state's Conflict of Interest Law, though state ethics officials say providing public employees with the answers defeats the purpose of the exercise.
In an email Monday to Hadley police officers, Police Chief Dennis J. Hukowicz wrote that officers should see him to take the 25-question test, which he also was setting up with sergeants.
"You can not fail the test as if you put down a wrong answer, you can go back and pick another one," he wrote. "If this doesn't get you through, I have the answers for you to copy on to the test."
"This testing will be good for two years," he added.
Hukowicz told the Gazette Friday he was merely trying to assist police officers with the ethics training when he issued the email to the force, as some officers may disagree with, or question, the answers. He said the Police Department has also experienced technical problems taking the test online.
"I'm just trying to help everybody understand it," Hukowicz said by phone. "My purpose is if somebody has a problem, I have the answers to help them through it."
"Somebody may not understand an answer," he added.
Under the state's new ethics reforms, cities and towns must name a municipal liaison to the state Ethics Commission who assists with developing procedures to comply with ethics training requirements and Conflict of Interest Law.
The ethics liaison: Nixon
In November, that task fell to David G. Nixon, the town's administrator, who told the Gazette this week he was not aware of Hukowicz's email regarding the ethics test.
"I suppose if he has the answers to the questions, those answers are contained in Chapter 268A (the Conflict of Interest Law)," Nixon said. "Giving them a copy of Chapter 268A would in effect be giving them the answers."
"What I need to do is find out what the chief meant," he said.
At the time of Nixon's appointment as state ethics liaison, some members of the Hadley Board of Selectmen scoffed at the new state requirement, with Selectman Brian C. West describing it as a "headache."
"It inundates people with time-consuming tasks and isn't going to get to the root of the problem," West said during a November board meeting.
"If they think this will solve the problems on Beacon Hill, they're fooling themselves."
'Defeating purpose'
For their part, state ethics officials said providing public employees with the answers to the test would in effect be defeating the purpose of the exercise, which is to educate public employees at the municipal, county and state levels about the underlying principles of the state's Conflict of Interest Law.
"Cheating or not cheating is really not the point," said David Gianotti, an Ethics Commission spokesman. "It's really getting employees to understand and comply with the law."
"They (public employees) can't later say, 'Oh, I didn't know. I had someone cheat for me,'" he said.
The online state ethics test features 25 multiple-choice questions on a wide range of scenarios in which current and former public employees are at risk of violating the Conflict of Interest Law.
Choose a wrong answer and the test explains why that answer is wrong and reverts back to the original question.
Test takers must then choose another answer and cannot move to the next question until the right answer is chosen.
The test, which takes 20 minutes to a half hour, even explains why an answer is correct under the law.
"There's no way we could make it easier," Gianotti said. "You can't fail."
Dan Crowley can be reached at dcrowley@gazettenet.com.
