The DeKalb Plan Commission may be recognized for its efforts to be more ethical. Last year, the commission adopted a code of ethics for its members, said Paul Rasmussen, director of Community Development.

The International City and County Manager Association nominated the commission for an ethics award, Rasmussen said. ICMA will hold the award ceremony at its 90th annual conference Oct. 17 to 20 in San Diego, Calif.

“There are very few communities in the state that have a code of ethics,” Rasmussen said. He said he wrote an article for the July 2003 issue of Illinois Municipal Review outlining what the commission did to adopt the code.

Herb Rubin, a commission member at the time, became an outspoken critic of a large development that was going into the city, Rasmussen said. He said Rubin wrote letters to the local newspapers protesting the development.

Rasmussen said the commission got responses to his article from cities around the country and as far away as Vancouver, Canada.

The purpose of the code was to answer the underlying question of what plan commission members can do as citizens, Rubin said.

“It wasn’t anything that caused a dispute. It just wasn’t in writing,” Rubin said. The code determined it was a conflict of interest for a commission member to comment specifically on a development.

A compromise in which members could comment publicly on general issues but not on anything specific was reached, Rubin said.

“You could say, ‘I do not support growth,’ but you couldn’t say, ‘I do not support this particular development project,’” Rubin said.