Safra Working Papers

It's not easy to publicize ethical and unethical activity in a responsible manner. And when this is done, it can sometimes lead to false attacks on the the legitimacy of the organization doing the publicizing. This is what happened this week in Colorado.

A new argument has been made in the legislative immunity part of the case against a Baltimore council member who is now the mayor. In a memorandum to dismiss a new indictment (attached; see below), filed on September 8, the mayor has argued, on pages 3-10, that testimony by someone who attended events which the mayor attended in her legislative capacity cannot be used against her.

In November 2010, Broward County, FL voters approved an ethics code for officials of the cities in the county (the code also applies to the county commissioners). The code finally became effective January 2, 2012.

In an April 2013 blog post, I wrote about the problems surrounding a Florida state senator's request for a state audit of Palm Beach County's EC. That report, drafted by the state legislature's Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, has recently been published, and it includes the EC's response to the report (attached; see below).

Worth reading is an op-ed piece Saturday in the Canberra Times by Jack Waterford, the paper's editor-at-large. With a title you'd never see in an American paper — Weaning Players Off the Public Teat — Waterford takes a very frank approach to the revolving door between government and lobbying.

I've written recently about the propriety of the new chair of D.C.'s ethics commission practicing in matters that involve the city government. In that case, there was an appearance, based on the chair's own website, that he was seeking benefits for his clients from the council and certain city agencies. He said he would not do this while sitting on the ethics commission.

Here's another blog post about a Georgian who wants out of EC jurisdiction.

Some ethics commissions, especially state ethics commissions, have no jurisdiction over officials once they leave office. Especially when ECs require confidentiality regarding complaints until probable cause is found, this lack of jurisdiction allows officials to resign before their unethical conduct becomes public. And it allows officials to evade enforcement.

Update: December 10, 2010 (see below)

"You say that [we are] corrupt and I'll jump over this table and punch you out." Those are the words of Philadelphia city commissioner Margaret Tartaglione, according to an article in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer. She was upset by a journalist's questions regarding the handling of elections in Philadelphia.

When I put in the DVD yesterday evening, I did not expect the movie Admission (2013; written by Karen Croner, based on a novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd) to be a revelatory movie about the mishandling of conflicts of interest situations. But it is. Not in government (it's about a university admissions employee), but the situations are easily applicable.

City would link incentives, behavior By Steve Patterson Times-Union staff writer - published in 2000 in the Jacksonville Times Union Racism charges at the Adam's Mark hotel chain are helping fuel an ethical debate at Jacksonville City Hall. Citing the massive downtown hotel project as an example, members of the city Ethics Commission are pondering whether companies that receive taxpayer money to move to Jacksonville should have to prove they do business in an ethical manner.

What do sinkholes and poor drainage in a newly-built highway have to do with government ethics? Often, they are the result of incompetence. But they are also often the result of unethical conduct.

That seems to be the cause in Connecticut's big highway mess that has slowly been unveiled over the last two-and-a-half years, most recently in an article in the September issue of Connecticut magazine. The mess involves improvements to a 3-mile strip of Interstate 84, a $60-million  project whose cost has been increased by about $50 million, so far.

The most underrated aspect of accountability is the need for government officials to honestly and publicly explain why they do what they do. This need is strongest for two groups of officials:  elected representatives and their watchdogs.

It is, therefore, painful to see the chair of a major county board of ethics refusing to even speak to the press about his own possible conflict of interest. You can see it, too, in a video at the WGN-TV website.

Some news in Greensboro, NC led me to a blog post on old news in Greenburgh, NY, so here's the new news and the old news about two cities with nearly the same name.

In this, the third blog post on the Colorado ethics commission situation, I would like to look at the problems that can arise from placing an ethics code in a constitutional document, either a charter or, as in the Colorado case, the state constitution.

While we're in Nevada, there's another interesting case before the state's ethics commission that has ramifications for local government ethics. According to an article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, a probable cause hearing was to be conducted by one Democratic and one Republican commission member.

Here are two interesting situations where it is not clear what an ethics commission's role and authority are. One in Baltimore, the other in Philadelphia.

Ethics Commission or Agency, Ethics or Personnel?

Many people think that lawyers make the best ethics commission members. In fact, many ethics codes require that at least some members of an ethics commission be lawyers.

However, lawyers are the individuals most likely to have relationships and obligations that conflict with the obligations they have as EC members. For example, they often have relationships with elected officials, who are often lawyers themselves, as well as with clients who seek special benefits from the local government. And they often represent clients before their local government's agencies and bodies.

Updates below (latest on August 11, 2009)