Government Executives and the Ethics Commission Selection Process
Should government chief executives appoint ethics commission members or their staff? The common practice is that they usually do. But the common practice is not necessarily the best practice, especially when it puts a conflict of interest at the heart of the conflict of interest process.

This issue has arisen in a very concrete way in Montana, where the governor is faced with appointing a new commissioner of political practices, the office that runs the state's ethics program.

What can local government ethics professionals learn from what has come out in the recent indictments of former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, his father, the city's director of water and sewerage, Kilpatrick's CAO and CIO, and a city contractor?

"You say that [we are] corrupt and I'll jump over this table and punch you out." Those are the words of Philadelphia city commissioner Margaret Tartaglione, according to an article in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer. She was upset by a journalist's questions regarding the handling of elections in Philadelphia.

What got the commissioner so upset? It might have something to do with the fact that, on December 3, her daughter signed a settlement agreement with the Philadelphia board of ethics. Who is her daughter? She was, until resigning immediately after learning about the ethics board's investigation of her, the deputy city commissioner, second-in-charge of the city's elections, reporting directly to her mother's three-person board.

The spread of corruption from local to state to national is often ignored. And when corruption is discovered, there is much litigation. In fact, it's often hard to see corruption clearly here in the U.S. That's why the occasional look at corruption abroad is useful, like looking in an only slightly distorted mirror.

Teachers and teachers' family members seem to be just the sort of people to run for school boards. They have either the expertise and/or the interest in education. But with them come conflicts of interest, and these can cast doubt on what they're doing there in the first place.

Teachers in the particular school district generally can't run for school board seats, but many teachers don't live in the districts where they teach. This prohibition often applies to their spouses as well, but not to their parents, siblings, and children.

But when it comes to teacher contracts, even the parents, siblings, and children have a conflict between the interests of the public and the interests of their immediate family members in getting a raise and holding on to their benefits.

A Resignation from an Ethics Board for a Possible Future Conflict
A member of the Philadelphia Board of Ethics resigned recently, according to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The reason for his resignation was a possible conflict of interest due to his representation of the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) in producing documents as part of a federal investigation. The possible conflict seems fairly remote: a PHA tenant leader and executive director of a PHA-supported nonprofit operates a PAC that has purportedly failed to report more than $100,000 since 2006. The ethics board has jurisdiction over campaign finance matters.