Just as the Monica Lewinsky affair turned on the meaning of the word is, the case against Mayor Sheila Dixon could come down to the definition of person.
The city's ethics code requires public servants to disclose gifts from any person doing business with or regulated by the city.
Prosecutors say Dixon accepted thousands of dollars in cash, furs, travel and other gifts from developer Ron Lipscomb, who won big city tax breaks from a board she chaired. She disclosed none of it.
Problem?
Not really, City Solicitor George Nilson said in a written affidavit that highlighted his three degrees from Yale, which, as it happens, also granted a law degree to Parser-In-Chief Bill Clinton. Dixon's lawyers presented the statement in court the other day as they argued to have the case dismissed.
"When the party to the transaction with the City is a business entity ... the person doing business with the City is the entity that is the party to the transaction," Nilson wrote. "The entity's parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, owners, operators or subcontractors are not persons doing business with the City."
Same goes, he said, for a "person" regulated by the city.
By that reasoning, doesn't that mean the Health Department employee who goes out to inspect a pizza parlor is allowed to take free pies from the owner?
"You can make an argument, I suppose, in that situation that the owner and the entity are regulated by the city," Nilson told me in phone interview Friday. "And you also might say it really is the pizza parlor that's providing the free pizza. The owner might say, 'Have a pizza on the house.' "
Prosecutors allege that in many cases, including a $2,000 gift certificate for a fur coat and a $3,200 weekend at New York's Trump International, Lipscomb's Doracon picked up the tab. Nilson volunteered as much.
"I do have some recollection that at least one of the transactions that involved a gift way back whenever involved ... a corporate account," Nilson said.
But he still maintained that "the gift was a gift of the individual and not the corporation."
It almost goes without saying then, under that interpretation, that it's OK if Lipscomb wooed Dixon on his personal credit card, even as his various companies sought tax breaks from the city. As long as he didn't personally sign any contracts with the city, Nilson said, it's all good.
