“Incompatible offices” is a form of conflict that is usually left out of ethics codes. One reason is that there is a common law prohibition against officials holding incompatible offices. But whether or not the conflict is common law or in an ethics code, this is an important kind of conflict that should be included in ethics training so that it is understood. It should also be a topic for which officials may seek ethics advice.

There are many offices that one individual should not hold, and multiple reasons why one individual should not hold them, but the term “incompatible offices” refers to only a subsection of these offices and a subsection of the reasons they may be seen as incompatible. It also does not refer to offices held by couples, business partners, or boss and employee that might well be considered highly incompatible.

An incompatible offices matter has arisen in Salinas, California. A school board member successfully ran for the Salinas council. The school district is within Salinas.

The Colorado ethics commission matter that I discussed in my last blog post points to yet another reason why ethics commissions must have their own counsel, and a sufficient budget to pay that counsel.

According to a January article in the Colorado Independent, Colorado's Attorney General issued an opinion on January 8 supporting the Secretary of State's request for approval of his legal defense fund, through either transparency or a blind trust. The ethics commission's draft opinion opts for transparency. A blind trust in this situation would require that the public's trust be blind, that is, without any evidence or reason to believe the Secretary of State would not know about any of the gifts to the fund.

The AG opinion is problematic, not just because of its conclusions, but also because the AG is the ethics commission's counsel, just as the city or county attorney is in most local government ethics programs.

A February draft advisory opinion from the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission (attached; see below) raises two different issues. One is the problematic nature of a total gift ban, that is, a ban on all gifts from anyone, accompanied by a whole host of exceptions. The other is the important differences among gifts, campaign contributions, and contributions to an official's legal defense fund.

The draft advisory opinion relates to the solicitation of contributions to the secretary of state's legal defense fund. The defense involves a criminal investigation.

What is the best way to prevent high-level officials from participating in matters involving departments or agencies where their close family members are employed, without doing this unreasonably, that is, excluding situations where the family members have no influence and will receive no benefits?

This is the question that has been raised in Baltimore by council members, particularly the council president who, according to an article in yesterday's Baltimore Sun, says he "abstains from about 20 percent of votes before the Board of Estimates, the city's spending panel, because he has four family members who work in city government:  a daughter who is a teacher in the city's Head Start program; a brother who is a laborer working for the Department of Public Works; a sister who works as a customer service representative in the Mayor's Office of Information Technology; and a brother who works in human resources in the city housing department."

I have done a poor job in this blog covering administrative ethics, that is, the field of study involving the professional conduct of public administrators. Writers on administrative ethics have done a poor job of covering government ethics, that is, the field of study involving conflicts of interest. Although the two fields overlap, they exist in mostly separate worlds.  For example, rarely does an administrative ethics professor show up at a Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL) conference, and my work (among others') has been totally ignored by administrative ethics professors.

Government ethics is unusual in having very limited representation in academia. Instead, it is taught by professors who consider it essentially a small corner of their field, which is administrative ethics. And to the extent government ethics courses are taught, they deal primarily with the federal government, even though most public administrators work in state and local governments and the federal ethics program does not provide a good example for other levels.

I find this state of affairs disheartening. That is why I was excited to learn that, in the second edition of his book Ethics Management for Public Administrators: Leading and Building Organizations of Integrity (M.E. Sharpe, 2012), Donald C. Menzel added a new chapter, "Local Government Ethics Management in Action."

But what I found in the book was hostility to conflict of interest programs. My goal in this series of blog posts is to try to understand this hostility, and to propose that the disciplines respect and responsibly critique each other, rather than ignoring and, occasionally, showing hostility to each other. What we need is a dialogue and mutual respect.

[Note: I have made changes throughout this blog post, based on a February 25 e-mail message from the COG executive director]

It should feel good when a pet idea of yours becomes a reality. My pet idea is the regional ethics program, whose biggest successes have been of the countywide variety, such as Miami-Dade County and Palm Beach County, FL (there is also a Broward County program, but it is run by an inspector general). There are a few regional ethics commissions in Kentucky, and one in Northwest Indiana, but they don't really have ethics programs.

I'm sad to say that I do not feel good about the creation of the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments Regional Ethics Commission.

One good thing about it is that it was formed in a different manner than the others. It was formed by a council of governments (COG), which is the body by which local governments in Connecticut cooperate in such areas as conservation, development, transportation, and emergency management. The COG in southeastern CT consists of 20 cities, towns, and boroughs, with a total population of around 250,000. No county is involved, because Connecticut has no county governments.