There is a serious controversy going on right now in Jacksonville regarding the transparency of text messages by local government officials concerning government business. This is an issue where most governments have failed to keep up with technology. That's common, of course. But from a government ethics point of view, what is most important is how the issue is approached.

Florida, which is known for its good sunshine laws, dealt with the issue back in 2009 when, according to an article in the Jacksonville Daily Record this week, the attorney general announced a policy treating text messages as public records and automatically retaining those messages that go through the agency server. And, according to another Daily Record article this week, Florida's Sunshine Technology Team determined that texts were public records. Its then chair happens to now sit on the Jacksonville ethics commission.

According to an article in yesterday's Washington Post, new allegations have been made of a "shadow campaign" by which the District of Columbia's largest contractor (in contract dollars) supported the current mayor's 2010 campaign to the tune of about 650,000 unreported dollars. The money was allegedly spent on all the usual campaign expenses, from yard signs to consultants to staff salaries, but most of it was focused on the last two weeks of the election period and on certain districts.

There are three issues here that I would like to focus on. One issue arises from a defense made by the public relations consultant who made the allegations about the secret campaign, regarding the contractor's secret expenditures:  the contractor did not want to anger the incumbent mayor, because it would harm his business. The second issue involves the mayor's knowledge of the secret campaign. The third involves the mayor's recent selection of members for the new ethics board.

They have various names, such as councils of governments (COGs), joint powers authorities (JPAs), and regional councils or commissions, but whatever names they have, these local government associations are often left outside of both local and state government ethics programs. And yet, as the term "joint powers authorities" implies, they do wield power and do spend or affect the spending of money, often huge amounts of money in transportation, water, and other construction projects.

According to an article in the Los Angeles Times this weekend, the executive director of a California COG was charged last week with four felonies relating to his use of his office to obtain grants for a consulting firm he owns. His consulting firm has a managing contract with the COG, but in addition it has obtained grants through the use of his position. The COG coordinates efforts among 31 cities, 3 water districts and county supervisors in the Los Angeles area.

There is a section of my new book Local Government Ethics Programs (click and scroll down to subsection 9) on the need for more transparency in the provision of ethics advice. What I just realized is that this is another government ethics topic on which Stephen Colbert, who has enlightened the U.S. on the absurdity of the Super PAC, has given us a lesson.

In a conversation with Trevor Potter, who was John McCain's general counsel and acted as Stephen Colbert's Super PAC counsel, and Bob Bauer, the Obama campaign's general counsel, conducted by UVA Lawyer (both attorneys graduated from University of Virginia Law School), Potter said that he really has been Colbert's lawyer. It's not staged:  "[U]nless I’m supposed to have a particular role, like with the Jon Stewart handoff, he doesn’t tip his hat about the questions in advance. He wants his viewers to hear what he can and can’t do with his Super PAC."

What the audience has been watching is government ethics advice actually being given, in public rather than in private. When the goal is to educate the public, public ethics advice is not only acceptable, it is appropriate and it is beneficial. It can even be entertaining.

Despite writing this blog for six years, I keep finding important areas of government ethics that I have not discussed. One such area involves dealing with the possible conflicts of outside auditors. Large cities and counties have internal auditors or comptrollers, but most local governments employ the services of external auditing firms, just as companies do. These auditors have special duties toward their clients, that is, to the community, not to the individuals who hire them and with whom they work. And yet these auditors owe their contracts to the individuals they work with. If they ask too many questions, investigate too carefully, or are too critical of what they find, they have reason to believe that their contract will be given to a competitor. Therefore, even more than outside attorneys, they are caught between their professional obligations, their personal relationships with officials, and their commercial interest in not rocking the boat.

Bell CA Auditor's Disciplinary Proceedings
This issue has arisen with respect to last year's most famous government ethics scandal, the huge salaries of Bell, CA officials. According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, California's Board of Accountancy filed disciplinary charges against Bell's outside auditing firm for failure to detect financial irregularities, including the overcharging of residents and businesses more than $6 million in taxes and fees and the placing of $23.5 million in bond funds in a non-interest-bearing checking account.

In recent years, Florida's elected officials have shown a great deal of leadership in the field of unethical and criminal misconduct. The state has a weak state ethics commission, which has jurisdiction over local officials, and until recently only one good local government ethics program, in Miami/Dade County (Jacksonville and Palm Beach County joined this list with ethics reform last year). The major voices in government ethics in Florida have, sadly, been grand juries.

The need for a good government group focused on government ethics has recently been filled by Integrity Florida, a nonpartisan nonprofit headed by Dan Krassner, a former public relations professional and campaign adviser, who has been Chief Strategy and Communications Officer for the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Vice President of Communications at Florida TaxWatch.