In Isle La Motte, Vermont, according to a recent article in the Burlington Free Press, the longtime town clerk and treasurer diverted $100,000 of town funds to her own use. Before the town learned of this, its Selectboard (the town's elected executive board) had arranged to allow her to pay back the money along with interest and audit and legal expenses.

One member of the Selectboard was the town clerk's father, and another was a close friend of hers. The people were incensed about the deal, but they had no ethics code and no recall provision in their town charter. So there was nothing they could do.

Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.

Hello all CityEthics.org members,

Our Research Director, Robert Wechsler has been following this issue with interest, and would like to get some Ethics practitioners to weigh in on the issue.

Early on, I did a blog entry on apology. I even included apology in 107(1) of the Model Ethics Code, as a stated option for officials, so that their municipality does not have to go to the trouble of investigating their actions and holding hearings.

Yesterday, I attended a lecture by Nancy Berlinger of the Hastings Center in Garrison, NY on apology in the medical context. I think government officials, whom she cited as those having the greatest problem apologizing, could learn a lot from what medical professionals are doing. Like medical professionals to their patients, government officials have strong obligations to their constituents and can do them a great deal of harm.

Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.

Personal interest vs. public interest is central to government ethics. We tend to think, however, that it's central to them (officials) not to us (citizens), and that we have nothing to learn from this sort of ethics. Well, we're wrong. Take flu shots, for instance. People get flu shots because they feel they are personally likely to be seriously harmed by the flu (older people, very young children) or likely to contract it (people who work in hospitals and schools).

But what if people were given flu shots because they are more likely to spread the flu (children), that is, if people were more concerned about the public interest than their own interest? A population that, like ours, thinks of themselves contracts 100 times more flu infections than a population that thinks of others. Giving flu shots to 77% of children could all but eliminate seasonal flus.

This is based on an Economist article, which is not available on-line, which is in turn based on a study by Prof. Alison Galvani of Yale University and her colleagues.

Buried in my blog entry on the Louisiana legislators' attempt to undermine recusal on constitutional grounds is a short discussion of what I refer to as 'the public-interested side' of recusal. I would like to talk a little more about this, because I think the failure to discuss it enough is a serious problem.

When a government official has a conflict of interest, he or she is forced to choose between conflicting obligations. We all have this problem every day: for example, do I spend more time with my son, or my daughter, or my wife, or my work?

Government officials are a special case, because they have a fiduciary obligation. Other professional have a similar obligation, but governmental officials' obligation is not just to clients or patients or their boss, but to the public. They are required to act only in the public interest, not in their personal interest, or in the interest of their family members or their business associates or friends.

The emphasis in conflict of interest discussions is on government officials who put their personal interests ahead of the public interest. But there is another side of the coin: government officials who put the public interest ahead of their personal interests. What do ethics laws have to offer to the good guys, to those who favor the public interest? What they have to offer is the ability to say, I can't be involved with this because I have a conflict of interest. Ethics laws allow thoughtful, ethical officials the right not to have to choose, the right not to have to reject their brother-in-law's zoning application, their sister's job application, their wife's boss's request for a no-bid contract.

Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.

Before I got around to putting up a blog entry on the ethics mess in Louisiana, it took a turn for the worse. What started as two legislators protecting the jobs, respectively, of their father and their brother, has turned into a full-fledged constitutional battle that could undermine the concept of recusal for conflicts of interest nationwide.

As it is now, ethics codes usually require that legislators, state and municipal, refrain from participating or voting in matters where they have a conflict of interest. The two Louisiana state representatives, Jeff Arnold (D-New Orleans) and Alex Heaton (R-New Orleans), are seeking an injunction against the Louisiana Board of Ethics to stop its investigation of and to prevent a hearing on their actions.

Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.