Two Aspects of a Poor Ethics Environment

I never know where I'm going to find something that inspires a blog post on local government ethics. This time it was an essay by Tim Parks in the March 8 issue of the New York Review of Books, as well as on the NYRBlog. The essay is about Italy, and the possibility for change in its government, economy, and culture. Parks, a British novelist and once literary translator from Italian into English who has lived in Italy for many years, notes two things about Italian political culture that resonated with me here in the U.S.

One aspect of Italian culture that Parks noted was "a tendency in general to foment and then thrive on a gap between the official version of events and their actual course, between rules and practice, appearance and reality." This isn't exactly lying. It's something much more serious, because it is more pervasive and insidious. A lie is something limited. For example, saying you've cut taxes when you've increased the mill rate. What Parks is referring to is a cultural norm where nothing that is said is actually true, where written rules aren't followed in practice, where what you see is never what you get.

This is the case in many cities and counties with a poor ethics environment, here as in Italy. Reality in a poor ethics environment is like pieces of eggshell in a bowl of cracked eggs. If you don't have your own piece of eggshell, it's really hard to get a hold of the pieces of eggshell to get them out of the bowl. Reality is elusive. The goal of those in charge of the eggs is to make sure that no one gets a piece of eggshell of their own, unless it's clear that they won't use it on the other pieces of eggshell.

It's a Wonderland experience to speak to a room of eggshell holders. If they let you speak at all, they will twist your words in ways you never imagined. If you speak of an official's possible conflict, they will defend his integrity, even if you never mentioned it. If you speak out in favor of government ethics training, they will say that everyone got their ethics training at home and at their house of worship. That little word "government" simply disappears into the bowl of eggs. If you try to explain what you mean, and aren't told you already had your say, that it's someone else's turn, you are personally attacked. Either you don't know what you're talking about, or you're out of order, or this isn't the place or time for this conversation, don't you understand? Reality must remain elusive.

As for ethics rules, they're just something written down on paper (and usually not available online). What matters are the unwritten rules. Those are the ones officials know and practice, even if they would never mention them in public. The rules that are followed, the real rules, are not for reading, they're for doing. Lawyers are there to make sure that what is done can be shoehorned into what is written, if all else fails.

The other aspect of Italian political culture that grabbed my attention was what Parks referred to as the "extreme ambiguity as to the real center of power." In a poor ethics environment, even one with a strong mayor, the individual who is "in power" is not necessarily the one in control, the one who pulls the strings. There are fiefdoms where the chief is really in charge. But the traditional machine is run by someone else, or by a cabal of individuals secretly sharing power. Many people think direct accountability is what matters most, but how you can make anyone accountable when you don't even know who's in charge?

People "in the know," but not "insiders," may speculate about who is really in charge, but even they often don't really know. Keeping this a secret undermines the entire government's transparency, even the entire community's. It increases the fear factor, and the discomfort about participating in government. Is the power in the hands of the head of this or that agency, the county attorney, the city manager, the party committee chair? Or all of them together? Who really puts together the budget, who works the numbers after the budget has been passed? Who controls who gets contracts, kickbacks, grants, and faster permit approval? Who can you trust? What can you do to get rid of them? How will you know you succeeded?

Italy is hardly alone in having such a culture, and even in Italy some regions and cities have it, while others don't. It's the culture of a poor ethics environment, and it is based on secrecy, unwritten rules, and the breaking of rules for the purpose of helping yourself and your family, business associates, and those who help you.

An environment where what is said is not what actually is — this is a poor ethics environment that is in great need of an independent, comprehensive ethics program. The harder officials fight against this — and drafting a mediocre ethics code, with all the excuses for not giving an ethics commission independence, teeth, or staff, is the best way to prevent there being a good ethics program — the more likely the secrecy is not about boys (and, increasingly, girls) playing a power game, but rather involves some serious misconduct.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

---