Independent agencies, especially those with lots of money to spend and contracts to enter into, require not just ethics policies, but a comprehensive, independent ethics program. This rarely acknowledged fact has been made clear once again by an external audit of an agency that proved completely unable to self-regulate its officials' and employees' conflicts of interest. The agency is the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), which not only manages the area's two principal airports, but also manages a toll road to one of the airports and a huge project to extend subway service to that airport. The external audit, published on November 1, was done by the federal Transportation Department's inspector general.

Intimidation is, I believe, the worst kind of ethical misconduct in government, because (1) it limits or changes participation of people in the democratic process, (2) it is emotionally damaging, and (3) it enables all sorts of ethical misconduct. Intimidation is a fundamental form of misuse of power and position. (For more about intimidation, see the section of my book on this topic.)

Intimidation is a clear sign of a poor ethics environment. When I first became involved, as a citizen, in my town's politics (we have a Town Meeting form of government, so the town's citizens are its legislators), I immediately met with intimidation from most of the top elected and appointed officials. And I saw how town employees were expected to go to Town Meetings and vote with the town's executive body. Were they personally intimidated? Most likely not. But did they feel as if they had no other choice? Most likely.

Is this sort of intimidation any less damaging when it is indirect, that is, when it is done not by officials but rather by those who seek benefits from these officials? I ask this question because, according to an article Wednesday in In These Times, presidential candidate Mitt Romney has told employers, "I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections." And some employers have listened by telling their employees that, if President Obama is re-elected, their employer will be hurt and there will be layoffs.

It is important to bring contractors into an ethics program, requiring them to disclose gifts their employees make to officials, and to deal responsibly with possible conflicts they are aware of. Businesses tend to deal with such things internally. Bringing them into an ethics program requires them to recognize that dealing with conflict situations internally is not enough.

The fact is that most ethics programs do not place sufficient requirements on contractors. Often, ethics programs have no jurisdiction over them or no enforcement powers. This means that contractors have nothing to fear from dealing irresponsibly with conflict situations or even from making gifts to officials. Or it means that enforcement is left in the hands of officials, thereby politicizing enforcement.

The latter is what occurred in Chicago, according to an article in yesterday's Chicago Tribune. When, last week, the Tribune got hold of a letter mentioning an internal investigation of possible ethical misconduct by the employee of a company that has operated Chicago's red-light camera program since 2003 (the conduct involved a gift to the principal official overseeing that program), the city's chief procurement office quickly went to work, without handing the matter over the city's ethics board.

One of the most important ways of preventing ethical misconduct usually does not appear in an ethics code, because it does not involve a traditional conflict of interest. I am referring to non-legislative roles played by local legislators, especially roles that enable them to create a pay-to-play environment. These roles are played in the two principal areas where ethical misconduct occurs:  procurement and land use decisions.

In past blog posts, I have focused on land use involvement, especially the usually informal authority given to local legislators over land use decisions in their districts, what is known as "district courtesy" or, in Chicago, "aldermanic privilege." This "courtesy" has also been a major ethics problem in such places as Dallas, Prince George's County, MD, and Gwinnett County, GA.

Legislative involvement in the bidding process, whether formal or informal, can lead to equally serious ethics problems.

According to an article in last week's Economist, last year 22 local councils in Italy were disbanded and taken over by the national government due to alleged infiltration by organized crime. This is an extreme way to deal with a poor local government ethics environment. But it's a very difficult problem for a local government to deal with.

What about over here? According to an article in the Montreal Gazette this week, a commission studying corruption in Montreal, the Charbonneau Commission, heard evidence that "multiple fields of the construction industry in Montreal and surrounding regions were controlled by a small group of contractors who took turns 'winning' bids, and paid a percentage on the value of every public contract to the Mafia." The Mafia was paid via false billing. "Any contractor who tried to break into the system quickly learned that the Montreal market was 'hermetically sealed,' and that it was best to go elsewhere."

According to an article in the San Antonio Express-News this week, San Antonio's deputy city manager is concerned about whether he mishandled a conflict situation. It involved his participation on a bid review committee for a $300 million contract for an expansion to the city's convention center. While on the bid review committee, he interviewed for and accepted a job with a nonprofit whose focus is downtown development. The vice chair of the nonprofit is the CEO of one of the companies bidding for the expansion contract.

What does an official do when he recognizes that he has mishandled a conflict situation? What the deputy city manager decided to do was write a letter to the city's Ethics Review Board (ERB) asking it to determine whether he violated the city's ethics code. This was the right thing to do.