Safra Working Papers

According to a January 15 memorandum, a week from today the Dallas city council will be considering an amendment to the city's ethics code, which would exclude municipal management district (MMD) board members from the ethics code (it has already been approved by the council's economic development committee).

Here's an interesting conflict situation out of Forsyth County, Georgia. According to an article in the Forsyth News, a county commissioner owns a company that buys county water and sells it to county residents who used to have wells. The company owns the infrastructure that supplies water to four subdivisions in the county. It is one of several companies that do this. The companies are charged the flat commercial water rate, rather than residential rates that increase with use.

I may seem obsessed with legislative immunity, but it is both a timely topic for so old a constitutional concept and a serious threat to local government ethics enforcement that, I feel, the government ethics community should start dealing with offensively rather than, as it is now being handled, defensively.

Yesterday, according to an article in the Dallas Observer, Don Hill, a former Dallas council member, and four of his associates were found guilty of participating in an incredible extortion plot relating to affordable housing in South Dallas.

Last's week's Economist provides a look at a new form of local government ethics enforcement in China, which exists because local governments have failed to institute ethics programs. That form of enforcement is murder, and it appears to be increasingly accepted by the courts.

Another cause for my last blog entry, on the three lies of government ethics, is that I had just finished F. G. Bailey's book The Prevalence of Deceit (Cornell, 1991). The book is about the close connection between deceit and power. Bailey pictures politics as a contest for power that employs rhetoric.

I don't talk much in this blog or in my book Local Government Ethics Programs about character. However, there is another approach to government ethics that is sometimes referred to as "the character approach." For example, the Josephson Institute trains local officials on the six pillars of character. There are ethics codes, too, that take a character approach to government ethics.

Every time I check up on Jackson County, MO, I find something more that's shameful, if that word can be used anymore. This time a blog sent me to a You Tube video of the county legislature passing the new ethics ordinance, which I discussed in a blog entry earlier this week.

Honesty, although central to ethics, is not central to government ethics. The reason for this is that honesty, or falsity, is so complex, it is almost impossible to define or enforce. And first amendment freedom of speech places so many limitations on government regulation of expression short of libel (the intentional attempt to falsely destroy another's reputation). Life is full of mistakes and misreadings, half-truths and kernels of truth, and these do not constitute falsity. Honesty comes in more shades of gray than a black-and-white movie.

There is a lot of talk about courtesy in politics, but most discourtesy involves lack of respect and uncontrolled emotions on the part of officials in their relations with each other. It becomes an ethical problem when citizens are attacked in order to intimidate them and others from being involved in local politics. The conflicting interest here is central to democracy: participation in government. False personal attacks are a favorite means of decreasing participation and citizen oversight. I've been on the receiving end myself, and it is ugly.

Many complex conflicts of interest involve the spouses and other close family members of local government officials, as can be seen in Broward County (FL, home of Ft. Lauderdale) according to an article in the Sun-Sentinel.

Everyone knows it’s not right for government officials to favor their friends, but because friendships are so difficult to define, they don’t appear in ethics codes. Relatives can be defined, domestic partners can be defined, business associates can be defined, but not boyfriends or pals or old buddies. This is one of the limitations of dealing with ethics in the form of a law. But the Massachusetts Ethics Commission, which deals with local government as well as state government officials, has found a way to deal with favoritism given to friends.

Two years after allegations made by the Baltimore Sun, two years after state prosecutors began an investigation, a year and a half after being appointed mayor (after being city council president), and six months after being elected mayor, Baltimore's Sheila Dixon's alleged favoring of friends and family has been brought before a grand jury, according to an article in today's Sun.

A three-year FBI investigation of Cuyahoga County (which includes Cleveland) appears to have begun with a sting operation involving building inspectors, where an undercover agent offered bribes, and they were accepted, according to an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Six building inspectors were charged in May.

Music to my ears in an order yesterday from the federal court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, in a case involving an unsuccessful attempt by certain Wisconsin state legislators to claim the attorney-client privilege with respect to documents relating to redistricting. What resonates so nicely is the way the court considered state citizens to be the client of the private lawyer.

I came across a decision in Patty Salkin's Law of the Land blog today involving a federal statute that allows federal prosecution of those who give gifts to local officials in amounts greater than $5,000.

Accepting fees and honorariums is a minor conflict, but one that occurs a great deal. Please share your thoughts and experiences.

100(15). Fees and Honorariums

No official or employee* may accept a fee or honorarium for an article, for an appearance or speech, or for participation at an event, in his or her official capacity. However, he or she may receive payment or reimbursement for necessary expenses related to any such activity.

Type "ethics" into the search line at utah.gov, and all that comes up is Archery Ethics Course Online.

In response to what are referred to in Utah as last year's "ethics wars," a new legislative ethics bill has been drafted. What is interesting for local government ethics is how focused the new bill is on fighting last year's war, with little thought about anything else.

To what extent should financial disclosure rules be applied to nonprofits that do government work?

According to an article in Sunday's New York Times, two years ago New York State extended disclosure requirements to the board members of nonprofits "affiliated with, sponsored by or created by a county, city, town or village government." The goal was more transparency in quasi-governmental organizations.

Update: May 14, 2011 (see below)

An ethics controversy in Hartford presents a perfect opportunity to show the difference between ethics and law, and the right way to approach financial disclosure requirements.