A New Report on the Ethics Programs of Florida Counties

On November 29, Florida State University’s LeRoy Collins Institute and the new good government group Integrity Florida released a report entitled "Florida Counties Bridge the Ethics Policy Gap", which analyzes the results of a survey of government ethics programs and reforms in 45 of Florida’s 67 counties.

Besides a lot of statistics of the sort lacking in local government ethics, this report looks closer into the actions taken in certain counties that have tackled one or more areas of government ethics, from conflicts and disclosure to lobbying and procurement. The report's statistics include ethics training, ethics commissions, inspector generals, and ethics "point persons" (I wish it was made more clear how many counties had an independent office or individual to provide timely ethics advice, since this is the most important part of any ethics program).

Despite the optimistic title, few of Florida's counties have made up for the weakness of the state's ethics program. Although there is training, mostly through the state league of cities, few counties have anything resembling an ethics program, and one of those few (Duval County/Jacksonville's) is the result of years of hard labor by City Ethics' president, Carla Miller.

Hopefully, citizen organizations in the other counties will use this report to argue for their counties to have comprehensive, independent ethics programs like those in Duval-Jacksonville and Miami-Dade counties.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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