In his book The Search for a Nonviolent Future, Michael N. Nagler wrote, "Anyone who plucks up the courage to offer an opponent a way out of their conflict can find herself or himself wielding an unexpected power." You may need to read this sentence over a few times before it completely sinks in.

The Courage of Ethics Commissions
Is he talking about about internal conflicts or external conflicts, about violence or government ethics? And if violence, why would he focus on helping a violent opponent get out of his conflict? This is thinking outside the box in terms of violence, but it is exactly what every government ethics professional should be thinking when faced with an official's conflict situation. How can I help the official get out of it (or avoid it entirely, if possible)? Because handling the conflict responsibly is what is best for the public and its trust in government. The goal is to put the public trust at ease, to pacify the situation in the best way possible. This is not to be confused with appeasement. Such an approach is due not to weakness, but to strength, including the strength that comes with knowledge and understanding.

Another way in which violence and unethical conduct are similar is the way they are handled by the news media. Just as violence is generally discussed in terms of separate battles and wars, day by day, unethical conduct is discussed in terms of separate scandals and individuals, day by day. And unethical conduct is responded to in the worst possible atmosphere.

What this does is prevent an awareness of the problem of unethical conduct in general and what constitutes a poor ethics environment. In addition, like war, unethical conduct becomes a spectator sport. People curse or laugh at individual officials when they are caught. And the whole web of relationships involved is ignored, at least beyond the statement that "All politicians are crooks." Analysis takes a back seat to blame.

Conning Citizens
Car towing is one of the biggest temptations in local government. A police officer goes to the scene of an accident, and one or more drivers needs to have their cars towed. The drivers are injured or at least in shock, and rarely thinking straight. The officer has been offered so many dollars per car that he steers to a towing company or a bodywork shop with a tow truck. No one will know and no one will be hurt. It might be called a kickback, but it's no more than doing a service for the towing company, a way of moonlighting on the job. At least that's what the officer tells himself.

Faida Hamdy was a municipal inspector in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia. She was not a very respectful municipal official. So when she found that a young fruit vendor did not have a license, she slapped him. She humiliated him in front of others. The fruit vendor set himself on fire, and this set the Arab world on fire, because the same sort of disrespect from government officials was felt throughout the Arab world. Disrespect is a very powerful thing. And so is respect.

Fortunately, the leaders of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt had been studying nonviolent techniques, techniques that demand and earn respect. And they successfully applied these techniques.

I recently read Michael N. Nagler's fascinating book The Search for a Nonviolent Future. Over the next few days, I will be applying some of the concepts and practices of nonviolence to the field of government ethics. This provides me with an opportunity to consider some of the most important philosophical and practical questions in government ethics.

I talk a lot about poor ethics environments, probably the single most important element in unethical conduct. But since loyalty is the strongest force in such environments, a great deal of work is done to hide the existence of poor ethics environments. After unethical conduct is discovered, it is rare for anyone to set out just how bad things were.

But sometimes things are so bad, it becomes clear that there aren't just a couple of bad apples, but a whole bad crop. Tamarac, Florida, a city of 60,000 in Broward County (home of Ft. Lauderdale) is such a place. In fact, southern Florida itself seems to have been one big rotten crop of oranges, at least during the boom years.

In the last installment of the ongoing Stamford (CT) ethics battle, the major antagonist had reached a settlement with the ethics board, and the principal cases, both ethics proceedings and a federal suit against the ethics board and the ethics complainants, were withdrawn. But this is a grudge match, and the major antagonist, who resigned from his position as chair of the board of finance, has friends. So the battle goes on.

In the middle of the principal battle, the ethics board had asked the board of finance for funds to hire an attorney to advise it in the many proceedings it faced. This request was rejected. After the settlement, it asked again, for less money, and its request was once again rejected.