Ethics Creativity

A favorite ploy in local government ethics is for a council to vote for an ethics code that includes an ethics commission, and then either not actually appoint members to the commission or, when they resign, not fill their seats, so that there is, effectively, no enforcement mechanism.

But a legislative body cannot do this when it self-enforces. It has to be more creative. The Tennessee House has just that sort of creativity. According to an article on WTVF-TV's website, in 2005, in the midst of the state's big pay-to-play scandal, the Tennessee House passed an ethics code (all of five pages long), establishing an ethics committee. The creative part is that the ethics code must be readopted for each session, or it is nonoperative. So four years later, there is still an ethics committee, but there is no operative code.

The article contains an update, which says that the house ethics committee chair doesn't know why the code was not readopted, but he'll be on it right away. Let's give our thanks, once again, to the press.