Safra Working Papers

Forget the fascinating range of ethics programs at the local level. It is congressional ethics programs that get the national attention. And with all this attention, what Congress does, and fails to do, has a great effect not only on what happens at the local level, but also on the rhetoric employed there.

When Congress self-administered its own ethics, every council or county commission member could say that if self-regulation is good enough for Congress, it's good enough for them. Only legislative bodies, the rhetoric went, can oversee legislators.

Despite writing this blog for six years, I keep finding important areas of government ethics that I have not discussed. One such area involves dealing with the possible conflicts of outside auditors. Large cities and counties have internal auditors or comptrollers, but most local governments employ the services of external auditing firms, just as companies do. These auditors have special duties toward their clients, that is, to the community, not to the individuals who hire them and with whom they work. And yet these auditors owe their contracts to the individuals they work with.