“There’s a case out there; I myself cannot speak about the case. However, I would ask the community, each and every one of you, to keep me in your prayer.”

— Spring Valley, NY mayor Noramie F. Jasmin, at the first public meeting after she was arrested for accepting a bribe from a developer who was cooperating with the FBI (from an article in today's New York Times). As happens far too frequently, Mayor Jasmin turned the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent into a prohibition on her to speak honestly about the allegations made against her.

Appearances are very important in government ethics. A situation that has arisen with respect to a proposed state audit of the Palm Beach County ethics commission has created serious appearance problems.

“We have a system that only catches morons.”

—Unnamed New York state legislator and ethics reformer, quoted in Gail Collins' New York Times column today. The "system" being referred to is our criminal justice system, which is only able to prosecute government officials who take bribes from strangers (see my recent posts on New York arrests). Is this why most officials seem to prefer to let government ethics be dealt with by the criminal justice system?

Yes, another New York state legislator has been arrested on bribery charges. That's scarcely news. According to an article in today's New York Times, he was helping developers get permits to open adult day care centers in his district. In other words, he was doing local constituency work as a state legislator, using his influence rather than his votes.

But that's not all. What makes this bribery case unusually egregious is his introduction of a bill to place a moratorium on the construction of competing day care centers. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York referred to the legislator's bill as “an especially breathtaking bit of corruption, even by Albany standards.”

We often hear elected officials saying, "I can't be bought at any price." The assumption behind this statement is that there is no amount of money, no job offer, nothing that will make the elected official act or vote any way than the way he otherwise intends to act or vote, that he cannot be influenced.

In a discussion forum I follow, journalist Ben Adler pointed out that there might actually be different prices for different acts. Sometimes elected officials accept gifts or campaign contributions from people who simply want to nudge them a bit this way or that, a provision or even a word, which would not go against the official's views or values at all. The price for this would presumably be low.

Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said yesterday, in reference to a sting operation that led to the arrest of several elected officials in New York City and the village of Spring Valley, NY, “A show-me-the-money culture seems to pervade every level of government.” However, that's not really the moral of the story.