I want to revisit a situation I mentioned a few days ago in a post about ethics reform. Common Cause Rhode Island was recommending a reform to deal with the situation where gifts are made to officials by an organization that is not an "interested party" (and therefore not subject to the gift ban) because it does not do business with or lobby, and is not regulated, by the state, or by a local government, but may have members or supporters who do business or are regulated and/or that effectively, although not legally, lobby officials.

Last September, I wrote a blog post about the attempt by District of Columbia council members to block a subpoena by employing a legislative immunity defense. The case involves retaliation against a whistleblower who had alleged improper council input in the awarding of a lottery contract.

On Monday, the federal district court for the District of Columbia decided that the council members (one of whom is now mayor) are required to testify about matters relating only to retaliation. However, the basis for this decision was solely that "efforts to exhort" the executive branch do not fit under the D.C. legislative immunity law's definition of "legislative duties."

Here's an interesting political activity situation out of La Crosse County, Wisconsin. According to an article in the La Crosse Tribune last week, the county administrator was involved in supporting a referendum to give the city of La Crosse its own administrator. A city or county manager is not supposed to be involved in local politics, according to the ethics code of their own professional association, ICMA. But this issue was not in the county government, although it was in the county. And the administrator considers his support "promotion of my profession" rather than political activity.

Over the weekend, I read a March 2010 draft of Rebecca Roiphe's law review article "The Ethics of Willful Ignorance," which appeared in the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Volume 24, Issue 1 (Winter 2011).

Willful (or deliberate) ignorance (or blindness) describes what happens when someone has reason to believe that something is wrong (often that misconduct has occurred) and chooses not to look further into the matter (often in order to be able to deny any knowledge of misconduct). Roiphe looks at willful ignorance by a citizen in a criminal context and by a lawyer in criminal and civil contexts. She notes that in certain criminal situations,where there is a statutory obligation to know, a citizen who willfully ignores facts that would trigger such an obligation can be held responsible. For example, if someone has a reason to believe that there are illegal substances in a car she is driving, she has an obligation to look for them. If she does not, she can still be held guilty of transporting those substances (the principal case is United States v. Jewell, 532 U.S. 697 (en banc), cert. denied, 426 U.S. 951 (1976)).

Imagine that you're a county supervisor with a $92,000 salary and, despite the salary, you're allowed to hold an outside job (because the county supervisors before you gave you, and themselves, this opportunity). With a sizeable salary, there would appear to be no reason to work in any field that would create an appearance of impropriety.

Here are three instances of ethics reform that, I hope, would not happen if someone involved had read the chapter on ethics reform in my Local Government Ethics Program book.