If the governmental ethics community had a publicity program, the headline of a front-page article in Tuesday's Kansas City Star would be a call to arms:

Legislators agree: Ethics laws are puppies, not pit bulls

The gist of the article is that, in Missouri and Kansas, the state ethics commissions are underfunded, the state ethics laws are too weak, and enforcement is insufficient to act as a deterrent.

But the real problem here is that the ethics commissions have not gotten across the fact that enforcement is not the most important role for an ethics commission. Yes, the article does talk about the better job that is being done with campaign finance disclosure, at least in Missouri. But there is nothing about ethics training, or advisory opinions, or ethical leadership, financial disclosure, or the ethics commissions' role in ethics reform.

The ethics commission leadership appears to be at best reactive. We can only work with what we have, they suggest. And by doing this, they feed in to the view that since they are funded by legislatures, they are creatures of the legislatures, afraid to take strong stands.

Bob Stern, who knows how to promote his Center for Governmental Studies, is quoted as saying that the tendency is for ethics commissions to pull punches. “The threat is, ‘If you guys go too far, we’ll cut your funding,’"

Many state ethics commissions do fight for additional funding and better ethics laws. There are two principal reasons why other state ethics commissions don't do this:  establishment commission members, who have no interest in rocking the boat, and commission staff who either don't feel it's their role to take initiative in these areas or fear for their jobs and/or the future of the ethics commission.

But however conservative one's view of one's role, an ethics commission has an obligation to publicize the essential elements and values of government ethics programs. For example, when reporters bring up enforcement, explain how this is only one function of an ethics commission, and only one form of deterrence of unethical conduct. When a reporter ignores the rest of an ethics program, write a letter to the editor or an op-ed piece in response.

Educating the public is nearly as important as educating government officials and employees.

Local government ethics commissions have even fewer resources, but publicity doesn't have to cost anything but time. Creating an informative website, cultivating reporters, writing occasional op-ed pieces and letters to the editor, holding public forums, letting people know about ethics commission meetings well in advance, all these can raise the awareness and understanding of government ethics in your community, and make citizens more likely to support, and maybe even demand, ethics reforms.

It's interesting how different the enforcement statistics are for Missouri and Kansas. Last year, according to the article, Missouri, which can only investigate complaints, received 197 complaints and levied 44 fines. 80 cases were dismissed as unsubstantiated.

Last year, the Kansas ethics commission investigated 32 formal complaints, of which only 2 came from the public. The others were initiated by the commission, often based on informal tips. Only 2 fines were levied, and the bigger of the two, $7,500, was levied against a person who publicly said he had filed an ethics complaint. Critics say the public isn’t filing formal complaints due to the commission’s lack of transparency and its reluctance to punish violators.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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