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Good and Bad News from Three Cities
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
Robert Wechsler
Good and Bad News from Memphis
The good news from Memphis is that newly-elected mayor A. C. Wharton, Jr. issued an ethics executive order last week (attached; see below). The order's provisions, which do not apply to council and its staff, are less valuable in their own right than as a prod to the council to improve the current ethics code.
The order's provisions are to be enforced by the city's Chief Ethics Officer, who will be appointed by the ethics board. The bad news is that the results of investigations are to be reported to the mayor rather than to the ethics board (which hears about violations of the ethics code). That's a mess, and certainly not a good long-term setup for an ethics program.
The ethics executive order follows on a transparency executive order, which requires a great deal more disclosure than before, but has time periods that do not present the image of a city in a rush to get information out. The fact that the ethics executive order is hard to read online (which is why it's attached rather than linked to) does not provide much faith that Memphis's documents will be easily accessible any time soon.
The other good news from Memphis, according to an article in the Commercial Appeal, is that the council has finally appointed an ethics board, the first time under an ethics code passed in 2007.
Good and Bad News from Montreal
The good news from Montreal, according to the ctv.ca site, is that the city's ethics hotline is up and running. The bad news is that the city's ethics councillor is a member of the city council.
Good and Bad News from Philadelphia
The good news from Philadelphia is that, according to an Inquirer editorial, the mayor wants to end the political work done by employees of the city's Board of Revision of Taxes (BRT). And the council wants to break the BRT up into two separate offices, an assessment office and an appeal board.
Because city employees are not allowed to participate in city political campaigns, the BRT's employees are paid by the city school district, whose employees are allowed to get involved in political campaigns. This clever ploy has made the BRT a hotbed of patronage jobs.
The bad news is that the mayor has not chosen to put the BRT's employees on the city payroll. He has decided to give them a civil service exam, and not allow people without their experience to take the exam.
The good news is that the mayor has hired as the new BRT executive director a member of the city's ethics board who is supposed to be independent.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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