Safra Working Papers

Constituent service is a basic legislative role that I have pretty much ignored in my blog (click here to read the principal exception). Government ethics focuses too much on votes and self-serving conduct, and too little on the ways in which council members and other government officials help their constituents in special or inappropriate ways. Constituent service is central to Dennis F.

My last post about Dennis F. Thompson's book Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption is a miscellany of interesting quotes and valuable ideas.

Individuals and companies doing the work of government or work approved by government, even when they do not have a direct financial relationship with government, should be within the jurisdiction of a government's ethics code. This controversial position is strengthened by what happened to many Tennessee local governments, according to a front-page article in today's New York Times.

Sometimes it's very difficult for a government official to deal with a conflict of interest involving a member of his or her immediate family. The common approach to ethics is to assume that an official will favor a family member, but sometimes an ethics law can take an official out of the uncomfortable position of having to reject a family member. And sometimes the situation with a family member can have elements of both.

Consultants often fall between the cracks of government ethics. They are contractors, but professionals rather than suppliers or construction companies, and they often act just like government officials, only they're not on the payroll. And yet the ethics rules that apply to government officials often do not apply to consultants. Often, ethics commissions don't even have jurisdiction over consultants.

Here is an editorial from today's Salt Lake City Tribune about the state of the state's ethics laws. I've read editorials like this before, but this one sounds unusually hopeless. After the editorial, I will throw out an idea about how to go about getting politicians to make the right sort of ethics pledges.

Ethics reform: If at first you don't succeed ...

One of the biggest problems people have with government ethics is acknowledging the difference between ethics enforcement and ethics practice. Ethics enforcement is legal. You cannot enforce rules that are not in the law. But when it comes to ethics practice, the law represents only the minimum requirement. The law is what you have to do, but an official can be more ethical, more open, more responsible than what is required. Officials have fiduciary duties that go far beyond the provisions of ethics codes.

Let me take a logical approach to the topic of government ethics proceeding confidentiality before I look at what has been happening in Utah this last week.

Government ethics is intended to protect the public from officials acting in their own interest rather than in the public interest.

Acting like this is considered unethical conduct.

It is in the interest of officials to hide their unethical conduct from the public.

It is in the public interest to know about officials' unethical conduct.

Louisiana legislators do not seem to like the state Board of Ethics. Earlier this year, two of them sued the Board of Ethics, based on a decision it made. Now the Legislature has passed a bill clearly intended to get rid of the Board's chief counsel, Gray Sexton. The first version of the bill, House Bill 532, required that Sexton no longer do outside work after August 2008. The bill was amended to require that Sexton disclose all of his private legal clients in the interim.

Ethics problems and the need for ethics programs are the stuff of cities and, perhaps, larger towns, or so most people think. In small towns, everyone knows everyone else, and people can't get away with unethical conduct. And as for corruption, there simply aren't enough zeros in the town's budget. There's not much to learn from small towns, in terms of municipal ethics. Right? Middletown Springs, Vermont is a town of 823 (2000 census), and yet its town meeting voted on a proposed conflicts of interest ordinance this month.

One government ethics question that does not have a general answer is whether boards of education or school systems are under the jurisdiction of city or county ethics programs. The answer is sometimes, but generally not.

There are several reasons for this. One is that many, probably most school systems have different boundaries than cities and counties. Generally, these are regional, including all or parts of multiple cities, towns, and counties.

Accusing someone of a conflict of interest can lead to trouble, especially if the person you accuse is a litigious lawyer and you do it outside of an ethics proceeding. This is what one can read from a $5 million suit filed by a former town attorney against the town of Victor, NY  (pop. 10,000) and a member of the town's planning board.

I learned recently that the Luzerne County (PA) ethics pledge movement, which I wrote about in May and September, is complemented by a draft charter which is to be approved or rejected by voters on November 2.

When the criminal justice system finds that government officials are involved in a conspiracy to pursue illegal conduct in an environment of fear and intimidation, they bring racketeering charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). This is what happened with the Atlanta schools cheating scandal.

You don't hear too much about recidivism in the municipal ethics world. One reason may be that it happens, but often at different levels, as a politician moves up the ladder. Take Congressional Representative Gary Miller, for instance. According to a recent article in The Hill, he got his start when he was a member of the Diamond Bar (CA) City Council.

Ethics reform aimed at political opponents is a good way to undermine the whole idea of ethics reform. This is what is happening in San Jose.

Annapolis is an unusual little city in many ways. It may only have 40,000 residents, but it's the state capital, the county seat, the home of the U.S. Naval Academy, and equidistant, and not far, from Baltimore and Washington, D.C. With respect to government ethics, the county for which it is the county seat, Anne Arundel County, has a relatively good ethics program, complete with an executive director, which is very unusual even for a county of half a million people.

Almost two years ago, I wrote about the self-serving nature of attempts at ethics reform in the village of Niles, outside Chicago. A lot has happened since then, but in terms of an ethics program, not much.

Yesterday, the Seattle City Council passed amendments to the city's ethics code, based on recommendations from the city's ethics commission, according to an article in the West Seattle