One of the most damaging aspects of ethical misconduct in government is that it decreases the amount of citizen participation in government activities. People feel that their local government is rigged to help politicians and their families, friends, and business associates. It's not worth spending time getting involved in a rigged system, unless your goal is to be part of the in crowd.

It was nice to read an article in this Sunday's New York Times about a solution to a problem I've written about in the past:  the New York city council's discretionary funds (often referred to as "slush funds"), which have sometimes been given to organizations run by people with special relationships to council members. The solution – in an experimental stage – is not oversight, but citizen participation (see another blog post on an oversight approach to the same problem).

The situation of Rose Pak, a power broker for San Francisco's Chinese-American community who was featured a week ago in a New York Times article, raises some interesting questions. A paid consultant to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, she has never held public office. Nor has she ever registered as a lobbyist or been an official member of a campaign, even that of the Chinese-American man who was just elected mayor, Edwin Lee. According to the article, she has mobilized Chinese votes, volunteers, and contributions for a succession of mayors and city supervisors in return for city financing of social programs and building projects in Chinatown. She also helps Chinese-Americans get appointments in the city government, most notably Lee's appointment as interim mayor (he had been the city administrator).

Constituent service is a basic legislative role that I have pretty much ignored in my blog (click here to read the principal exception). Government ethics focuses too much on votes and self-serving conduct, and too little on the ways in which council members and other government officials help their constituents in special or inappropriate ways. Constituent service is central to Dennis F. Thompson's book Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption.

He wrote, "The culture of Congress is so strongly imbued with the ideal of serving all constituents equally, the members find it difficult to acknowledge any favoritism in such service. They believe, with evident sincerity, that they serve all equally.” Great pride is taken in this role, and it is also seen as an important way to get support and to get re-elected. Incumbency is valuable to a district because the more power a representative has, the more favors she can do for constituents.

A post yesterday in Coates' Canons: NC Local Government Law Blog raises an interesting issue about the situation of a local government candidate who has an interest in a contract with the local government which, by NC law, is prohibited not for candidates, but for a winning candidate the day he or she takes office. This provides a good occasion to look at the intersection of candidates and local government ethics codes, outside of the more common campaign finance issues.

It's fascinating how different issues are important to local government officials in difference places at different times. I couldn't say that officials will always dig in their heels and fight this ethics provision, or that another ethics provision never raises an eyebrow.

Take Broward County, FL, for example. After numerous arrests and convictions of local officials, the county commission passed a new ethics ordinace, and the county's citizens voted to have this ordinance apply to the county's municipalities (see my November 2010 blog post).

Many of the municipalities had problems with the ordinance, so the county commission asked the Broward League of Cities for its recommended changes in adapting the county code to municipalities. The county ordinance and the League's revised version are attached below, so that you can open them side by side, if you'd like. You might also want to look at the Sun-Sentinel's chart comparing the two.

On Friday, the Louisville ethics commission found that a council member intentionally violated several ethics provisions. This was its first major action under the city's new ethics code, which I wrote about last year. The EC gave the council member the most serious penalty it can give to a council member, a letter of reprimand and a letter of formal censure. And then it did something unusual: it recommended to the council that it commence proceedings to remove the council member.