Blogs

I've just finished reading a book called Illicit by Moises Naim, about the trafficking of everything from people and drugs to artworks and counterfeit DVDs .

One of the things Naim focuses on is why governments have so much trouble putting a dent into any of these types of trafficking. The principal reason is the structure of relationships. Government bureaucracies lose out to increasingly flexible networks of individuals.

In the municipal ethics world, the situation is...

I also write a blog relating to my town's government. One purpose for starting the blog, and its sister information website (the town's website is so limited, it doesn't even include town ordinances, the town's code of ethics, or the town charter), was to create a model that could be used by people in other towns who are faced with an administration that is closed and acts unethically. I...

Is there an ethical requirement to discuss matters that are not being discussed?

Dan Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence, refers to something he calls the Four Attentional Rules. 'In any group, from the family, to organizations, to entire societies, there are these unstated rules that we learn tacitly about the questions that can't be asked.'

Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.

Usually an ethics pledge is something required of a town official or something requested by a good government organization. But sometimes an ethics pledge is an election strategy.

This is the case in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where the state legislature's Government Administration and Elections co-chair Christopher Caruso and his Citizens for Real Change slate of candidates took an ethics pledge earlier this month.

Click here to read...

My first experience with municipal politics in New Jersey, where I lived for nine years before moving to Connecticut, was accompanying some neighbors to a council meeting, because a couple of them wanted to speak about a change in zoning that affected the street we lived on. A neighbor asked the mayor when they could speak, and was told people would be alerted when it came time to speak. The council debated the issue and then, without a pause, started to vote on it. I rose in protest and had...

In an article published in the Jacksonville Daily Record on Thursday, Carla Miller revealed her plans as the City's new Ethics Officer:
'In a very large city like Jacksonville you can't say that every single person who comes into government will be an ethical and honest person, so it comes down to the control systems. I teach with Michael Josephson in 'Character Counts' and he calls it 'The Law of Big Numbers'....