making local government more ethical

You are here

In the news

Robert Wechsler

The new mayor of Indianapolis, Greg Ballard, who ran as a candidate who would bring ethics to city government, is already embroiled in a controversial ethics issue. He has appointed Robert T. Grand as chair of the Capital Improvement Board (CIB), which manages the city’s convention center and sports stadiums, including that of the Indiana Pacers, a basketball team owned by the Simon family. There is a good chance that the Pacers' lease will be renegotiated next year.

Grand, an...

The President of City Ethics, Carla Miller, recently participated in the 2007 NGES Advisory Group in the review of the Ethics Resource Center's first National Government Ethics Study which was released Jan. 30, 2008. You can download a copy by registering at the ERC's website: http://www.ethics.org/

From the Executive Summary:

Public Trust is at Risk

  • Rates of misconduct in government are already high — nearly 60 percent of government employees see misconduct.
  • At present, 30 percent of misconduct across government goes unreported to management.

Robert Wechsler

Good, open government does more than give people reason to trust those who spend their tax dollars. It even gives people a better environment.

According to an article in last week’s Economist, the annual Environmental Sustainability Index, which grades the environmental health of 150...

Robert Wechsler

The Ethics Resource Center’s first National Government Ethics Survey has just come out, and is available free at the ERC’s website, although it requires registration. It is the result of a random 2007 telephone poll of government employees, and is part of a series of polls looking at ethics in different sorts of workplaces. City Ethics' Founder, Carla Miller, was on the Advisory Group for this survey.

Here are some of the Survey’s...

Robert Wechsler

Articles have been written putting into question the study on which the following blog entry was based. The Tulane Law Review and Law School have apologized, but the authors, although admitting to their errors, stand by their conclusions and plan to publish a revised version of their law review article, according to an article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. For more on this,...

Robert Wechsler

The most important division in ethics is between ends-based approaches (consequentialist or teleological, best known as "the ends justify the means") and rules-based approaches (deontological).

The most important problem for individuals in government is that we are taught rules-based approaches while we’re growing up (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”), but in government most talk is in terms of ends (Will it raise taxes?).

Today’s New York Times has...

Pages