Here are three instances of ethics reform that, I hope, would not happen if someone involved had read the chapter on ethics reform in my Local Government Ethics Program book.

The Chicago Ethics Reform Task Force report was published yesterday. Well, at least Part 1 was published. As I said in my blog post about the announcement of the task force's creation, "four months, including the holiday season, is a short time for four people and their likely inexperienced lawyers to deal with a huge city's ethics program."

The task force managed to draft an 83-page report in a little less than five months, which is a major feat. The report reflects a great amount of research and contains a lot of good ideas. But the report does not present a vision of a comprehensive ethics program for Chicago. It merely makes recommendations, 34 of them to be precise.

Although in 2008, Orange County, Florida's Ethics and Campaign Finance Reform Task Force recommended (report attached; see below) that the county have an ethics board selected by a variety of community organizations, following the model of Miami/Dade County, and Section 2-457 of the county ordinances did provide for (with liberal use of the magic word "may") an ethics advisory board to be selected by the chief judge of the local circuit, Orange County does not appear to have an ethics board.

What it does have is an ombudsman. That is, the county took an inspector general approach to government ethics (and fraud and waste). Not only is that not what was contemplated by the task force, but the individual chosen to be the first ombudsman does not appear to be independent, nor have the credentials or background of an inspector general.

It looks like outsourcing may finally come to local government ethics. No, this doesn't mean that a city's hotline will be picked up by someone in India (in fact, hotlines in some localities are already outsourced to corporations). What it means is that the ongoing failure of scandal-ridden San Bernardino County (CA) to come up with an ethics program (see my blog posts on this) has finally been accepted as part of its government's nature. So, according to an article in the Press-Enterprise this week, the county supervisors have decided to outsource the county's ethics program to the state Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). And the FPPC has agreed to take on the job, applying the laws for state officials and employees to those in the county (the FPPC also has ethics provisions relating to local officials and employees, but it generally does not enforce them itself).

According to the blog of Kansas City, MO's mayor, Sly James, the KC Commission on Ethics Reform will be holding a public hearing tomorrow on its draft ethics code.

It's clear from the draft that the commission made excellent use of the City Ethics Model Code. The result is a good draft that falls short in a few very important areas.

Most important, the ethics commission would be selected by the mayor. The mayor would even select who the chair is, something that is ordinarily left to a board or commission. Any time the commission is seen as letting off the mayor or a mayoral ally, or coming down hard on a mayoral opponent, it will undermine the public's trust in the ethics program. There would be a big conflict at the heart of a program designed to prevent conflicts and to gain the public's trust in its city government. Ethics commission independence, real and perceived, is the single most important part of an ethics program. It is the foundation on which everything else stands.

On April 5, the county commission in Wayne County, MI (which includes Detroit) passed a new ethics ordinance (attached; see below), following multiple scandals. It contains many good provisions, but it does not create a government ethics program. By this, I mean that it does not provide an independent ethics commission, it does not provide for an ethics officer or other independent staff member, it does not provide for ethics training and only provides for written advice at an ethics board meeting within thirty days, which can be very difficult to achieve. Its disclosure requirements are minimal. And it does not provide for the ethics board to initiate its own complaints when it is given information but no individual is willing to risk filing a complaint (and here the principal burden of providing information is on the complainant, not on the ethics board).

Like so many attempts at ethics reform, this one appears to be too focused on solving problems that have arisen. In this case, the focus is on procurement, so that conflicts relating to land use, grants, and other areas where individuals and businesses benefit from government are ignored. And like so many attempts at ethics reform, this one appears to be lawyer-driven, focused on laws rather than ethics, that is, on provisions and enforcement rather than training, advice, and disclosure, which are the heart of any government ethics program.