Safra Working Papers

There is no greater pleasure for some people than accusing ethics professionals and ethics commission members of unethical behavior. That is why ethics professionals and ethics commission members have to be extra careful about what they do, and why individuals who have not dealt responsibly with conflicts of interest, at least in the recent past, should not accept a nomination to an ethics commission.

Last week, Wisconsin taught us the lesson that even when you go to great lengths to ensure a nonpartisan, independent ethics body, there will be politicians who accuse it of being partisan when it makes decisions against their interests. The good thing is that, when the body is truly nonpartisan and independent, these politicians look ridiculous. But often there is a serious confusion among nonpartisanship, bipartisanship, and independence with respect to the selection of ethics body members. It is important to understand the distinctions among them.

My most recent blog post involved ethics commission confidentiality. This one involves the other side of the coin:  ethics commission transparency.

Many local ethics programs are caught up in an ongoing battle with the city or county attorney. Usually this battle goes on behind the scenes. But in Honolulu, due to an unusual grant of budget oversight to the corporation counsel, this battle has gone public.

Once again, the failure to work out in advance the relationship between an ethics commission and an inspector general's office has led to the locking of horns in the midst of an ethics proceeding. This time the location of the turf war is the District of Columbia.

In a recent blog post, I wrote about how the mayor's selection for New York City schools chancellor needed to get a waiver from the state department of education because she lacked an educational background, and that she resigned corporate board positions to make it clear she was serious about taking the job, even though there were, in some cases, no clear conflict.

One of the news media's biggest problems is failing to look at the big picture and, instead, focusing on specific events and issues. This is especially true when it comes to government ethics, where the news media generally considers, and calls for, ethics reforms on a piecemeal basis.

What just happened in San Diego, according to an article in yesterday's Union-Tribune, is a lesson for local government ethics commission members, especially commission chairs, and even more especially chairs who speak out. Most important, it points out how important EC independence is.

A no-bid or improperly bid contract cannot help but create an appearance of impropriety. And yet not only do elected officials keep defending them, but they also refuse to acknowledge the appearance of impropriety that surrounds every one of them, especially when elected officials and their family members are involved. Here are two current examples, one in Dallas, the other in Richmond, KY, a city of 33,000 about 90 miles from Churchill Downs.

Dallas

Should council members do business with each other or with the mayor? Another way to put this question is, does their doing business together give rise to a conflict of interest?

Election officials. Who in a democracy should be more above suspicion than election officials? At the place where I vote, the line that is the required number of feet from the voting area is traditionally right along the near side of the sidewalk that runs along the edge of the school parking lot.

Who should and who should not sit on elections commissions? Other than land-use commissions (and, sadly, ethics commissions), elections commissions are probably the most abused in terms of membership. Take the election commission in Hamblen County, according to the March 7-10, 2007 entries in the noe4accountability blog. It has five members.

"As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it? --William Marcy "Boss" Tweed, 1871

see update below

Another of Boss Tweed's famous quotations is, "I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating." His and other city bosses' way of controlling politics through parties led to the reform movements of the progressive era, first to the idea of a strong mayor, and then to the idea of nonpartisan town managers.

There has been a controversy (which I missed when it originally arose a few months ago) regarding what Mitt Romney and his aides did with their government computer hard drives when Romney left office as governor of Massachusetts.

The Blind Men and the Elephant is an ancient Hindu fable that illustrates the tendency for a person to think that he has grasped the whole of a situation when, in fact, only a part of it is understood. This will be shown to be the case with government ethics programs based on a study of twelve municipalities of varying populations in the United States. It is a global concern that, as a result of inefficient, wasteful and corrupt dissipation of limited resources, services are diminished and the public trust lowered.

Efficiency is good, but sometimes friction is better. This is a basic statement of the argument made in a New York Times op-ed piece yesterday by Barry Schwartz, a psych professor at Swarthmore best known for his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.

Intimidation is, I believe, the worst kind of ethical misconduct in government, because (1) it limits or changes participation of people in the democratic process, (2) it is emotionally damaging, and (3) it enables all sorts of ethical misconduct. Intimidation is a fundamental form of misuse of power and position. (For more about intimidation, see the section of my book on this topic.)

Endorsing products and services is a minor conflict, but this is the sort of conflict that, if not specified, would not be considered a conflict under general language. Please share your thoughts about its inclusion and experiences with this problem.

100(16). Endorsements

No official or employee* in his or her official capacity may publicly endorse products or services.

It is important to bring contractors into an ethics program, requiring them to disclose gifts their employees make to officials, and to deal responsibly with possible conflicts they are aware of. Businesses tend to deal with such things internally. Bringing them into an ethics program requires them to recognize that dealing with conflict situations internally is not enough.