In January, I wrote a blog post about the District of Columbia ethics board's first public forum seeking recommendations for ethics reform. On April 17, the ethics board published a report that makes recommendations for improvements to the city's ethics program (attached; see below).

Of the five recommendations I made in my testimony to the D.C. board, only one of them appears in the recommendations. Our principal difference is that the board does not appear to agree with my argument that changes to ethics provisions should be left until all the essential elements of a government ethics program are in place. The ethics board's response to this is that, with respect to "structural and compositional changes to its makeup," it will "reserve any such comment and potential recommendations for future reports." That is, it will take the opposite approach to what I recommend.

Phoenix has followed Chicago in taking a task force approach to ethics reform. As in Chicago, the mayor selected the task force. The Ethics Task Force, which according to an article in the Arizona Republic, consists of "prominent attorneys and judges," filed a report with the council on March 6. I have been unable to locate a copy of the report, but I did find a 5-page executive summary of the supposedly 20-page report (attached; see below).

Phoenix is one of the largest American cities without a government ethics program. It has limited ethics guidelines (see the city's ethics handbook); no ethics training, as far as I could tell; ethics advice from either the city attorney's office or from a committee consisting of the city attorney, the city auditor, and the city manager; disclosure only of conflicts in certain situations; and no enforcement process. In other words, there is a great deal of improvement that can be done.

This week, San Antonio's mayor and city attorney proposed a number of reforms to the city's ethics code and campaign finance regulations. I will deal here only with the ethics reforms. A summary of the proposed reforms and a red-lined copy of the ethics code are attached (see below).

The impetus for these reforms is a matter I discussed in a blog post last September. The matter was mishandled by all involved, and some of the proposed reforms clarify the procedures to be used so that the next situation would presumably be handled better.

The mayor appears to have taken the reforms seriously. For one thing, his office reached out to me (and, most likely, others) for information on which to make responsible decisions. Sadly, few officials making ethics reform proposals contact me or show signs of having read City Ethics materials.

Many major cities do not prohibit gifts from those seeking special benefits from the city government (restricted sources) to family members of city officials. Such a prohibition may seem a stretch, at least theoretically. How can a government interfere in the gifts given to an official's family members? Consider this situation, from 2011, which recently became public.

According to a recent article in the Washington Post, the CEO of a dietary supplement company seeking to get acceptance of its new supplement in Virginia paid $15,000 in catering costs for the wedding reception of the daughter of Virginia's governor. Three days before the wedding, the governor's wife spoke at a seminar about how the new supplement would be a way to lower health-care costs in Virginia. Three months later, the supplement's launch party was held at the gubernatorial mansion.

Government ethics is a process issue. Process issues appeal more to, and are better understood by, lawyers. Although corruption may be seen as a substance issue, the ways to prevent it are considered procedural. So at election time, most candidates choose not to talk about ethics reform, at least in any detail. When they raise the issue, it is usually to portray themselves as clean and ethical, and sometimes to portray others as corrupt.

This process-substance distinction is rarely made, at least publicly. But according to an article in yesterday's Yale Daily News, it was made yesterday by a New Haven mayoral candidate (a lawyer, of course), who said, “I’m not going to focus on these process questions. I plan on focusing on reducing crime, improving our schools, creating youth centers for our kids and creating jobs.”

This was said in response to another candidate's request that all candidates pledge to participate in the city's public campaign financing program (which I administered until last July), among other things.

“In Albany, they’re really, really good at coming up with something that looks like reform, and that they tout as reform, but really falls short.”

—New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, quoted in yesterday's New York Times with respect to the chances of the state legislature passing the governor's public campaign financing plan. This is the same problem that faces local government ethics reform:  ordinances and amendments that pose as reform, but miss the target by failing to create an effective government ethics program.