Double-dipping Burfoot drains public trust

No matter how you look at them, some decisions just look wrong. Even when made by honest men with scrupulous attention to virtue, such decisions make everyone involved look like a crony or worse.

It is the price we pay for Virginia’s comically inadequate ethics laws, rules that proscribe the trivial while permitting the scandalous. Such as permitting a member of the Norfolk City Council to simultaneously levy taxes, collect them and spend them.

Vice Mayor Anthony Burfoot this week announced he has taken a $52,000-a-year job as chief deputy for City Treasurer Tom Moss. Such double-dipping (Burfoot is paid $25,000 for his City Council duties) raises serious questions about any politician’s allegiances.

But the politics afoot in City Hall make this something else again.

The 80-year-old Moss, a former speaker of the House of Delegates, is running for another term. After campaigning in 2005 as an independent (because he knew he couldn’t win the Democratic nomination), Moss has now returned to the party, which allows him to essentially ensure his own renomination.

Even before he took the job in Moss’ office, the 41-year-old Burfoot was widely considered a rival for the treasurer’s job, which pays $144,252. Now Burfoot is the obvious heir apparent, and Moss has eliminated the competition in what will almost certainly be his last election.

Burfoot — listed on the city Web site as an independent insurance broker — declined to say whether he’d run for Moss’ job in 2013. Disturbingly, that’s the least of the conflicts he now faces.

Since the treasurer’s salary — at least the $40,241 not paid by the state — is a matter under the purview of City Council, this new job puts Burfoot at least ostensibly on the committee deciding his boss’s compensation.

Though other people in other places — Del. Paula Miller and Chesapeake Councilman Cliff Hayes — hold both elected office and positions working for constitutional officers, their jobs preceded their elections.

There are plenty of examples of what happens when the order is reversed, including among members of the Norfolk City Council who have been forced to resign a position or to work without pay.

There is no evidence that Burfoot has done anything wrong, and he has certainly served constituents honorably. But the appearance of this arrangement is dangerously damning for public confidence.

Forcing part-time elected officials to give up jobs they already hold is too high a price to pay for service, but citizens can and should expect those officials not to leverage their positions for professional gain.

Whether Burfoot did that or not, that’s the appearance here, and it taints him and Moss equally. The difference is that Moss’ political career is almost over. Burfoot’s is just beginning.