Ethics in Congress V - Constituent Service (Summer Reading)

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.

It is difficult to prove that a council member is giving more attention to one constituent's problem than to another. Poorer constituents generally have simpler problems, mostly with bureaucracy. Wealthy supporters are seeking contracts and variances, which demand more work. But as long as both are done, there is no favoritism.

Thompson believes that favoritism should not be the most important issue. “Instead of asking whether a member would provide the service equally for any constituent, we should ask whether the service should be provided in this way at all. Some ways of providing service damage the institution.”

What Thompson is referring to is legislators helping constituents evade the law, legislators not following regular procedures, legislators intervening in administrative proceedings, and legislators effectively extorting results due to their power to make life difficult on administrators.

Legislators should not only do things right. They also have an obligation to check out constituents' factual claims, especially when the stakes are high. As Senator Paul Douglas said, a legislator "should not immediately conclude the constituent is always right and the administrators always wrong.”

Checking a constituent's claims not only protects the public, but it can also protect the legislator when the "constituent" turns out to be an FBI agent. Legislators should not support any claim, help anyone in any situation. They have an obligation to the public to determine whether claims have merit before pursuing them.

But even good causes can corrupt. In fact, good causes can be more corrupting than the usual business cause, because good causes provide both wider support and stronger justification for inappropriate intervention. Thompson uses the Iran Contra affair as an example. "Oliver North would not have been able to mobilize so many supporters in the Iran Contra affair had he been acting mainly for personal gain.” This is equally true with local charitable causes.

The best way to put this issue is to ask whether a council member is an advocate or a representative. “To the extent that members see themselves as advocates, they may not recognize ethical problems in the way they intervene. They take their role to be like that of a lawyer, whose duty, they assume, is to fight for client without regard to the merits of the case.”

However, a council member is not a constituent's attorney; he is only the constituent's representative. And he is also the representative for the rest of his district, city, or county. Therefore, he has to determine whether it is in the public interest to pursue the claim. And when he decides the pursue the claim, he cannot do this as an unquestioning advocate fighting the bureaucracy, but rather as a representative balancing interests throughout the process. The council member needs to recognize that because opposing claims may not be represented in the process, he is responsible for considering, seeking out, and representing those interests as well.

This is hard work, and often a council member lacks the history, breadth, skills, and resources to do the job well. That is why Thompson recommends a congressional office for casework, with professional staffing, to handle constituent complaints. This would make constituent service both more efficient and more ethical. Similar cases would be treated similarly, and reoccuring situations would be more likely to lead to general reforms.

A council could do the same thing. There is no reason why constituent service needs to be so divided up. It's less effective, more expensive, creates the appearance of favoritism, and puts a council member in some very difficult positions. But constituent service provides a lot of electoral advantage to incumbents, and that is why it is handled the way it is. That and the fact that this is the way it's always been done.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

203-859-1959