A Comparison of Two County Ethics Initiatives

Last September, I wrote a blog post about an ethics initiative in Palm Beach County, Florida. A response to numerous scandals, it featured an ethics pledge, primarily for government officials, and a successful attempt to get an independent ethics commission and inspector general for the county government. I felt that the business leaders in Palm Beach County who led the initiative had a good understanding of government ethics, and took a fresh, effective approach.

I cannot say the same thing about a copycat initiative in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, the home of Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, called Ethics Awareness. Its ethics initiative, led by a business group and an ethics institute at Misericordia University, is also a response to numerous scandals (see my blog post on the most infamous one), but it lacks the focus of the Palm Beach initiative.

The difference can easily be seen by comparing the two initiatives' ethics pledges. Each pledge has seven provisions, and some are almost exactly the same. But the Luzerne pledge provides very little of the guidance that can be found in the Palm Beach pledge.

For example, the Palm Beach provision on use of confidential information and resources is as follows:

I pledge to neither use nor allow the use of resources or information to improperly or illegally further any interest.

The Luzerne provision (below) drops the most important part of this provision, the idea of using information and resources to further an interest. It leaves in the "improper or illegally" part, but gives pledgers no idea what that means.

I pledge not to use information, financial resources or other resources improperly or illegally.

Without the conflict of interest context, this pledge seems meaningless.

With respect to conflicts of interest, Luzerne has people pledging to avoid conflicts of interest, while Palm Beach also has people pledging to disclose conflicts. Since dealing responsibly with conflicts is at the heart of government ethics, it could be said that Luzerne's initiative, by focusing on the heart, in the emotional sense, misses the heart of what led to the county's scandals.

A major addition to the Luzerne pledge, which is not in the Palm Beach pledge, is the Definition at the top of the pledge:

Ethics is a moral code that guides human conduct in matters of right and wrong.

I don't think this can be said much worse. What does it mean for ethics to be a moral code? Which code, whose code? And why define ethics in terms of morality? This only confuses the issue.

What is important about ethics, in a government ethics context, is not right vs. wrong, but how to balance interests, both of which may be very ethical. For example, it's good to help your sister-in-law get a job, and if you're in government, that's where your connections are bound to be. But it's not good to use your position to give preferential treatment to your family members and business associates. Government ethics guides people in the balancing of goods, not just the good vs. the bad.

I was surprised to find, in the initiative's Discussion Guide for Adults, this same definition followed by another:

An ethical action is one that does the most good, or the least harm, to the greatest number of people.

This is a simple statement of the utilitarian approach to ethics, which is not the approach taken by most government ethics professionals. In fact, it is the approach taken by most politicians, especially when they defend their actions as being best for the community, even when they are helping themselves.

Government ethics takes a rule-oriented approach. Luzerne's first definition, referring to a "moral code," seems to lean that way, but its second definition clearly leans toward an utilitarian approach. It looks as though its essential philosophical approach has not been thought out very carefully.

The Ethics Awareness Resource Center is oriented strongly toward character and values. It makes a laudable attempt not to force any particular values on people, but rather to make them think about different sorts of values. But it provides very little useful guidance.

An important reason for the failure to provide guidance is that the ethics initiative is intended to apply to everyone, not just to government. This means that one of the most important bases for government ethics is missing: the precedence of the public interest over personal interests. This arises not from ethics, but from the demands of democracy. The Luzerne pledge mentions the public interest once, but it seems out of place, part of copying the Palm Beach pledge without providing the Palm Beach focus or approach.

Luzerne County's scandal did involve a lot of people whose silence was very close to complicity. This is one reason why Luzerne's initiative emphasizes the need for an ethical community, especially the need for speaking up and supporting those who speak up. This is where the initiative is best and most important. I think it should focus more on the specifics of what occurred, why it occurred, and what can be done about similar situations in the future. This is more valuable than the more abstract concepts of value and character.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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