Safra Working Papers

Three months ago, I wrote about an ethics commission decision asking for the removal of a Louisville council member, and the start of proceedings in the council to do just that. I noted that the council member's reaction was pure denial and attack on the ethics commission.

For any speech in debate in either house, no member shall be questioned in any other place, except by the ethics commission as set forth  in Article III, section 8 of this Constitution.

No, this is not the text of a dream I had last night. This is the text of an amendment to the Rhode Island constitution proposed yesterday by five state representatives in House Bill 2001-H 5410. The Rhode Island ethics commission has jurisdiction over local governments.

Once again, an elected official in the national eye took an opportunity to teach the public about government ethics and used it solely to distort government ethics and defend himself.

Once again, a local government official's attempt to use a charity to get around campaign finance laws has blown up in his face. According to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, an Atlanta council member was fined $25,000 by a state court for failing to register a foundation (named after himself) and failing to maintain financial records for it.

Today's guilty plea by New Orleans' City Council vice president, Oliver Thomas, is on its face about the acceptance of a bribe. But behind that bribe is a serious conflict of interest. Not only was Thomas the council vice president and longest-serving council member, but he was also a member of the board of the French Market Corporation, a city agency that owns and manages buildings in the French Quarter.

One of the worst times to create a conflict of interest is in the midst of labor negotiations. This is what has happened recently in San Francisco, where Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is negotiating contracts with its three unions. There was a short strike in July, and now there are negotiations with an August 4 deadline.

This is a very serious blog post, but I want to start it with a game. Here are the headlines of stories that are said to be "related" to an article on the WLTX website yesterday relating to local government ethics in South Carolina:

• Naked Woman Creates Ruckus on Delta Flight
  
• Latest Forecast Update on Storm Potential

Here's an all too common scenario:  A local government creates an ethics program after a scandal, and time passes either without another scandal or with a change of administration. The new administration sees the ethics program as unnecessary, and decides not to fund the program and not to replace ethics commission members who resign or whose terms run out. The ethics program remains on the books, but there is no training, advice, disclosure, or enforcement of the ethics code, no active ethics commission, and no budget.

Disclosure is almost always about what the public should know. But there is another side to disclosure: what the official should know. This is especially important in pay-to-play.

Back in January, I wrote about the California Supreme Court's decision in a criminal conflict of interest prosecution against members of a San Diego pension board.

It's Election Day 2009, so what better topic than a particularly slimy instance of negative campaigning that attacks a candidate for seeking an advisory opinion from the local ethics board, and actually following it.

There was a fascinating editorial in the Waterbury (CT) Republican-American yesterday. The editorial turns anti-government anger against the idea of a local government ethics program, and yet it has some valuable things to say about government ethics. Here's an edited version of it:

The first antitrust probe of the municipal bond market began in November, and except for one article from Bloomberg, it has been entirely ignored. According to the Bloomberg article, the Justice Department's Antitrust Division is looking for evidence of bid rigging, that is, collusion between banks and brokers to fix prices on guaranteed investment contracts (GICs).

As canaries were to mines, apologies are to a municipality's ethical environment. If you don't see a good number of sincere apologies, then ethics and accountability are probably dead in your town.

This Sunday New York Times' front-page feature on how doctors are recognizing the value (ethical and financial) of apologizing provides a good opportunity to bring up again what I consider to be one of the most important topics in local government ethics.

Early on, I did a blog entry on apology. I even included apology in 107(1) of the Model Ethics Code, as a stated option for officials, so that their municipality does not have to go to the trouble of investigating their actions and holding hearings. Yesterday, I attended a lecture by Nancy Berlinger of the Hastings Center in Garrison, NY on apology in the medical context.

In a New York Times column today, Michael Powell has unearthed an ugly-looking government ethics situation in New Jersey involving apparent misuse of government ethics authority to win a vote.

A front-page article in Monday's New York Times quotes Prayuth Chan-ocha, the general who currently rules Thailand, and who declared a net worth of $4 million (nearly half in cash) on an annual army salary of $40,000, as saying in a televised speech, "Do not judge people based on your perceptions."

According to Dan Lett's column in the Winnipeg Free Press yesterday, when a conflict of interest issue arises with respect to Winnipeg's mayor, his first response is to shrug his shoulders. If that works, that's the end of the matter.

One of the most difficult things for a government official to do is to determine whether his or her conduct creates an appearance of impropriety. Partially blinded by ego, surrounding yes-people, and the government's ethical culture, an official often finds nothing wrong with conduct that many or even most outsiders -- that is, citizens -- find questionable or downright wrong. It is hard for them to put themselves in citizen shoes in order to see whether their conduct might appear improper.