One of the best descriptions of an unethical environment in a government agency can be found in the two-page statement that followed the guilty plea of David Loglisci, the former chief investment officer for the New York state pension fund.

It's been four months since my latest update on San Bernardino County's failure to follow grand jury ethics reform recommendations with any action. An op-ed piece by Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, in this week's San Bernardino Sun calls for campaign contribution limits (there are currently none at all), a prohibition on off-year fundraising, disclosure requirements, and an ethics commission to enforce the law.

Do Chinese walls (that is, mechanisms that separate someone from information or involvement in a matter) work in conflict situations in government? And what considerations determine whether they work or not?

One consideration is whether, even with the Chinese wall, there is still an appearance of a conflict. Another consideration is whether the individual will still have access to the information or still be involved in the matter despite the Chinese wall; that is, whether the Chinese wall is really a Chinese screen.

There are two important Chinese walls in the news the last couple of days. One involves congressional representatives in the position of choosing defense-related earmarks and their access to information about which recipients of those earmarks made campaign contributions to them, at what amounts and at what times. The other involves what was apparently a sweetheart deal between Florida and the United States Sugar Company, where the governor's chief of staff's law firm represented U.S. Sugar in the negotiations.

Last December, I listed the major recommendations of Philadelphia's Task Force on Ethics and Campaign Finance Reform in its 58-page report.

According to an article in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer, just three months later, fifteen of seventeen city council members have co-sponsored a series of ethics reform bills. That sounds like good, fast work that deserves some serious applause.

But there are some big question marks. One is that none of the bills are available online. Each bill is given a bill-less page (1  2  3  4   5; also see the March 4 council minutes for a full list of the bills and sponsors), and in one case there is even a link to a bill, but the link doesn't work. So I am dependent, for now, on what I read in the newspaper.

Governors Aren't Always Governors
The involvement of New York governor David Paterson in his aide's domestic abuse matter gets right to the heart of government ethics.

According to an article in today's New York Times, Paterson told a state employee and mutual friend of his and the domestic abuse victim's, “Tell her the governor wants her to make this go away."

There's a lot of ethics news from San Diego today. First, the judge in the San Diego campaign finance case has clarified his ruling.

Second, the case involving the former president of the Center City Development Corp. is going to a hearing before the San Diego ethics commission next week. The allegations of the EC's general counsel list 34 counts of influencing a municipal decision when it was reasonably foreseeable that the decision would have a material financial impact on the former CCDC president's economic interests. The 34 counts are instances of her participation in matters where she is alleged to have had a conflict.