Safra Working Papers | City Ethics

Ethics Codes & Reform March 8, 2007

Logical Fallacies I: The Ad Hominem Attack

It is difficult to be an ethical politician or administrator, or even a citizen, without a basic understanding of logic. It is also difficult to appreciate others' unethical conduct without a basic understanding of logic. By logic I do not mean the opposite of irrationality, but rather critical thinking, and specifically an understanding of logical fallacies. Logical fallacies are probably the most frequent form of unethical conduct in municipal government.

Ethics Codes & Reform March 19, 2007

Logical Fallacies II - The Ad Populum Defense

Another logical fallacy commonly used by municipal officials is the opposite of the Ad Hominem Attack: the Ad Populum ('[appeal] to the people') Defense. The typical Ad Populum Defense is 'Everybody does it.' There are two simple responses to this. One is, 'How do you know what everybody else does?' In other words, you can't show that what you are saying is true.

Resources & Learning April 5, 2007

Logical Fallacies III - The Straw Man Wears Camouflage

When an official makes an Ad Hominem attack, everyone realizes there is an attack. And when an official makes an Ad Populum defense, everyone realizes that there is a defense. But when an official sets up a Straw Man, the situation isn't so clear. It's not an attack or a defense, but a response to an argument.

Resources & Learning June 20, 2007

Logical Fallacies IV - Begging the Question and Appeals to Emotion

At first glance, these two logical fallacies don't seem to have much to do with each other. When you beg the question, you assume something has been established or proved, according to my trusty dictionary. The way a logician would define the begging the question fallacy is that the premises include the claim or assumption that the conclusion is true, without providing any evidence or actual argument. The result is a circular argument, taking for granted what it's supposed to prove.

Resources & Learning September 27, 2008

Logical Fallacies V - Accusations of Hypocrisy or Inconsistency

A year and a half ago, I started a series of blog entries on logical fallacies and their use in municipal politics. Logical fallacies are pseudo-arguments that consciously or unconsciously attempt to falsely persuade or manipulate people. They treat people as means rather than as ends, manipulating their thoughts, their feelings, their prejudices, their loyalties for the speaker's ends.

Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play January 26, 2011

Logical Fallacies VI - The Slippery Slope

In a Pay to Play Law Blog response to my recent blog post on a discussion that had appeared in the Pay to Play Law Blog, the argument is made that pay-to-play laws that go beyond disclosure, such as prohibiting campaign contributions from government contractors, set up a slippery slope toward the undermining of constitutional rights and toward higher compliance costs by law-abiding companies. This argument turns out to be a logical fallacy, which allows me to get bac

June 24, 2006

LOS ANGELES

Los Angeles City Ethics Commission

The Los Angeles City Ethics Commission is a semi-independent agency authorized and funded by Los Angeles voters to administer and enforce a governmental ethics ordinance for the City of Los Angeles. The CEC is also responsible for administering and enforcing the City's lobbying and campaign finance laws.

March 1, 2013

Los Angeles Election Database Goes Online

Yesterday, Los Angeles' KCET-TV put up a database on it website to show who's giving to candidates in the current city and school board elections. You can see which city officials, business people, and others are giving, who's getting contributions from which zipcodes, and more. The database is a bit slow, at least today, just a few days before the first primary, but that's to be expected.

December 19, 2008

Lots of Good Faith in San Diego, and Still a Conflict of Interest Mess

Update below:

July 9, 2010

Lots of Wrongs, Little Right

How many wrongs does it take to make a right?

March 12, 2008

Louisiana Embraces Reform - At Least at the State Level

Ethics problems in Louisiana have shown up in this blog several times, so it’s heartening to be able to report that Louisiana is now putting into law a series of ethics improvements, some of which apply to local governments. For example, this week Gov.

April 28, 2007

Louisiana Ethics Reforms

This article is sourced from: http://www.laethics1.com/Package/ReformPackage.asp

A growing, statewide coalition of organizations has contributed to the development of this initiative and is supporting the following reform package in the 2007 session of the Legislature:

March 24, 2007

Louisiana Legislators Sue Ethics Board - Including Dialogue with One of the Legislators

Before I got around to putting up a blog entry on the ethics mess in Louisiana, it took a turn for the worse. What started as two legislators protecting the jobs, respectively, of their father and their brother, has turned into a full-fledged constitutional battle that could undermine the concept of recusal for conflicts of interest nationwide. As it is now, ethics codes usually require that legislators, state and municipal, refrain from participating or voting in matters where they have a conflict of interest.

June 15, 2011

Louisville Council Member Digs In As EC Decision Leads to Removal Proceedings

On Friday, the Louisville ethics commission found that a council member intentionally violated several ethics provisions. This was its first major action under the city's new ethics code, which I wrote about last year. The EC gave the council member the most serious penalty it can give to a council member, a letter of reprimand and a letter of formal censure.

March 14, 2010

Louisville's Middling Ethics Reforms

Philadelphia, Baltimore, and now Louisville have come up with ethics reforms in the past week or so. Baltimore's reforms were disappointing, while Philadelphia's were a big surprise to everyone, and came with a few serious question marks. Louisville's reforms are hardly a surprise, and they stand somewhere between disappointing and true reform.

June 18, 2012

Loyalty and Plausible Deniability on the 40th Anniversary of Watergate

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. For those too young to remember, President Nixon's re-election campaign had people break in to the Democratic National Committee's offices in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.

Local Government Practice August 4, 2013

Loyalty, Fairness, and Whistleblowing

An op-ed piece in the New York Times Sunday Review today looks at whistleblowing from the perspective of whether people lean toward fairness or loyalty (those who lean to fairness are more likely to blow the whistle on misconduct). This is, of course, a simplistic approach, but valuable nevertheless. What is especially valuable is the authors' recommendation of reframing whistleblowing. They want to reframe it "as an act of 'larger loyalty' to the greater good.

Ethics Codes & Reform December 20, 2010

Mack Truck Exceptions to New Gift Provisions in Alabama

People in Alabama are falling over each other claiming that their ethics reforms give the state the best, toughest ethics laws in the nation. But when you take a closer look, some of them don't look all that good.

Conflicts of Interest April 19, 2010

Making a Gray Area Black and White

Gray areas in local government ethics don't necessarily have to be gray areas.

According to an article last week in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a council member whose brother is a lieutenant in the city jail has been very vocal in opposing a plan to lease the jail to the county in which Atlanta sits. It is possible that the council member's brother would lose his job if the lease were approved.

Here is the relevant language in the city's ethics code:

Transparency & Disclosure September 6, 2011

Making the Private Misconduct of Public Servants Public

The situation where New York City's mayor misrepresented the reason for the resignation of one of his deputy mayors in order to protect his privacy regarding a domestic dispute raises some interesting issues about transparency, favoritism, and the extent to which the private should be made public.