Appearances are very important in government ethics. A situation that has arisen with respect to a proposed state audit of the Palm Beach County ethics commission has created serious appearance problems.

When the economy is booming, local government corruption feeds off the sale of government land, development projects, and construction contracts. When the economy is doing poorly, there is usually less money floating around to fund corruption. But in bad times, local governments are willing to accept the help of companies and nonprofits, which might have (or appear to have) their own interests at stake in what they fund for local governments. This leads to another set of problems.

An example of the sort of thing that might happen can be found in a complaint that was filed with Philadelphia's ethics board yesterday by a group called Parents United for Public Education and the local NAACP branch. The complaint alleges that a foundation not only funded, but also entered into a separate contract with, a consulting firm hired by the city to make recommendations to its school district regarding issues ranging from financial planning to charter schools.

Update: August 9, 2012 (see below)

People tend to think that all good government people are alike. The thinking goes that those who favor the improvement of ethics programs also favor such things as term limits, referendums and initiatives, and pension forfeiture by those found to have violated the public's trust. As a matter of fact, I don't favor any of these other good government approaches.

The one I want to talk about in this blog post is referendums. They are especially problematic because in theory direct democracy is an unadulterated good thing, but in practice it is sometimes disastrous.

Gift Bans
In Sunday's Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, former state representative Roger Hines wrote a column with the title "What Does Corruptibility Have to Do with a Dollar Figure?" Hines considered the state's $100 limit on gifts from lobbyists. After talking about the value of lobbyists, he talked about the first time (and, apparently, the last time) he accepted sports tickets from a lobbyist:

Defining what lobbying is is one of the most important parts of a lobbying law. Not only are many definitions of lobbying unclear or full of loopholes, but it is difficult to get even a good definition across, because the popular concept of lobbying is different from what lobbying really is.

This can be clearly seen in what has recently happened in the Orange County, FL school district. According to an article this week in the Orlando Sentinel, the school district has a new policy requiring anyone who approaches a district decision-maker hoping to influence a current or future decision or policy to register as a lobbyist, and to report all their phone calls, e-mails, and meetings with school district officials.

An excellent article on the front page of last Sunday's New York Times looks at a proposal by the federal Office of Governmental Ethics (OGE) to limit two exceptions to the prohibition on accepting gifts from lobbyists:  the "widely-attended gathering" (WAG) exception and the "social invitations" exception.

First, the proposal recognizes something the U.S. Supreme Court has been unable or unwilling to acknowledge:

If one views the problem of lobbyist gifts as the mere potential for some quid pro quo, then probably an invitation to a gala ball will not directly influence an official to take action benefiting the giver. But it is increasingly recognized that the more realistic problem is not the brazen quid pro quo, but rather the cultivation of familiarity and access that a lobbyist may use in the future to obtain a more sympathetic hearing for clients.