In November 2010, Broward County, FL voters approved an ethics code for officials of the cities in the county (the code also applies to the county commissioners). The code finally became effective January 2, 2012.

Three cities in Broward County (home to Ft. Lauderdale) have put referendum questions on the January 31 ballot seeking to strike the applicability of certain of the code's provisions to their cities' officials. The principal one is the requirement to disclose one's outside salary. Personally, I don't think disclosing a salary is necessary. It's sufficient to ask officials to say they are paid, say, more than $20,000 by an employer, or more than $5,000 by a client, to show that the job is serious and there is a financially meaningful relationship with a client.

What is notable about changing this particular provision is how self-serving it is for mayors to waste the public's time on a question that is only intended to protect their privacy. Of course, the argument is made that otherwise officials will resign in huge numbers. But if officials were to resign in huge numbers, the law would likely be changed. The fact is that disclosure requirements always lead to this argument, but rarely to the reality. When there were mass resignations in Oregon a couple of years ago (see my blog post), the officials either quickly were appointed again or others were appointed to replace them. The predictions did not come true, and the public did not suffer.

Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote an excellent op-ed piece for the New York Times last Sunday. It was about disclosure, more specifically about the way disclosure sometimes neither leads to more transparency, nor prevents what it is intended to prevent. In the government ethics situation, that would mean preventing misconduct.

Technical compliance, especially with the limited disclosure rules of local ethics codes, often provides little important information. We might know that an official owns more than 5% of Hometown Developers, but we don't know who owns the rest. Therefore, when one of the other owners comes before the official's board, there is no record of a special relationship between the owner and the official.

It's not every day that a neighboring town makes the front page of the New York Times. It's especially surprising when the reason is, at heart, a local government ethics problem.

The town is East Haven, CT (most recently in the national news for a part of it being overrun by waves during Hurricane Irene), and the problem ostensibly involves the mistreatment of immigrants in town by certain police officials. That's the criminal point of view. But the real problem is loyalty. The police, and certain town officials, put their loyalty to each other ahead of their loyalty to the town's residents. Four police officers have been indicted, one of them the head of the police union, and it appears that the union and the mayor are solidly behind them.

Stephen Colbert has been doing a great job satirizing the current federal campaign finance situation. He has especially made a mockery of the Super PAC, a means of allowing individuals and entities to make unlimited contributions to a candidate's campaign under the guise of independent expenditures. Colbert has shown how weak the rules on collaboration are, how the Super PAC is effectively, if not constitutionally, no different than a campaign committee. (Check out a five-part Huffington Post series on what Colbert has been doing, complete with videos.)

Government ethics could use the same treatment. With government ethics, the joke isn't that contributions to Super PAC allow exactly the same level of possible corruption as campaign contributions (whatever the narrow Supreme Court majority may think). With government ethics, the joke is that at the heart of nearly every local government conflict of interest program is a big conflict of interest.

As I near the end of writing my local government ethics book, I am going over local government ethics codes looking for unusual, but valuable provisions to include in a special section that follows my discussion of the run-of-the-mill provisions.

I would like to share one of these provisions that is truly worth thinking about. It appears in the Windsor, CO ethics code:

§5.2.M. No elected or appointed official or public body member shall offer or promise to give his or her vote or influence in favor of or against any proposed official action in consideration or upon condition that any other elected or appointed official, public body member, will promise or assent to give his or her vote or influence in favor of or against any other proposed official action.

Local governments often give special recognition to individuals and organizations. It's part of promoting the good works that are being done in the community. But it is also, of course, a form of preferential treatment. For every individual and organization that is recognized for good works, there are many others that are not recognized.

If each high-level official could provide his own special recognition to individuals and organizations in the community, then everyone would have a better chance of being recognized. But there would also be more chance for the misuse of office to reward (and obtain) supporters and contributors rather than good works, and to get in the good graces of various constituencies in the community.

This interesting issue arises from a front page article in today's New York Times about the frequency with which New York City's comptroller has handed out official commendations, 760 of them in his two years in office, a little more than one a day. Not only does he make the commendations, but he gives priority to the ceremonies attached to them. Unlike other officials, he usually delivers the commendations personally at events.