The Cost of Low-Quality Ethics Laws

The mayor of Baltimore is on trial for stealing $1,500 in gift cards, allegedly intended for poor Baltimore residents. A letter to the editor of the Baltimore Sun proposes a better approach than a trial costing hundreds of thousands of dollars:

... It is a shame that the people who really needed the gift card money, especially in this depressed economy, will not see any of the hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on this trial -- not even $1,500.

Could not some other resolution to the gift card problem have been considered, like a public apology for the so-called misunderstanding, and all parties involved contribute 10 times the $1,500 to the families who really could use the gifts for the coming holiday season?

John J. Heyn, Baltimore

Fifteen hundred dollars is hardly de minimis, but it's also not worth a full jury trial. But the trial is not about $1,500. It's about the mayor's future.

If not for the city's ethics law, crafted partially by the current mayor when she was council president, which makes it a crime to accept gifts from people doing business with city, the matter would have been handled long ago by the city's ethics board at a minimal cost.

But a criminal conviction would mean the mayor has to go, so instead of reaching a reasonable settlement with the ethics board, or a creative approach as suggested in the letter to the editor, the mayor is fighting for her life.

The quality of ethics laws does matter. If they are too weak, they are ineffective, and politics as usual reigns. If they are too unforgiving, they turn molehills into mountains, and enforcement requires a tenacity and waste of government resources rarely seen outside politics.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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