Safra Working Papers | City Ethics

September 10, 2013

Summer Reading: Richard Painter on Ethics Reform II

This is the second of three posts on how Richard W. Painter's recommendations for federal ethics reform in his book, Getting the Government America Deserves: How Ethics Reform Can Make a Difference (Oxford U.P., 2009), may be applied to local government ethics programs.

Rulemaking

September 12, 2013

Summer Reading: Richard Painter on Ethics Reform III

This is the third of three posts on how Richard W. Painter's recommendations for federal ethics reform in his book, Getting the Government America Deserves: How Ethics Reform Can Make a Difference (Oxford U.P., 2009), may be applied to local government ethics programs.

Lobbying

Resources & Learning September 17, 2013

Summer Reading: The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

I recently read the latest, third edition of The Ethics Challenge in Public Service: A Problem-Solving Guide by Carol W. Lewis and Stuart C. Gilman (Jossey-Bass, 2012). This is the second most popular text used in Public Sector Ethics courses, mostly in Public Administration programs. Most of the book deals with issues other than conflicts of interest, but it has some valuable things to say about the topic.

Resources & Learning July 10, 2012

Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind II - Individualistic vs. Sociocentric Societies

In his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012), Jonathan Haidt identifies one of the biggest obstacles to government ethics in the U.S.: the fact that we have an individualistic society, placing individuals at the center, rather than the more common sociocentric society, which subordinates the needs of individuals to the needs of groups and institutions.

Resources & Learning July 11, 2012

Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind III: The Social Nature of Moral Judgment

The Ethics of Gut Reactions

Resources & Learning July 12, 2012

Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind IV: Accountability

One section of Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012) is entitled "We Are All Intuitive Politicians." The section begins with a recognition of the centrality of accountability not just in government, but in all our relations with people. "Human beings," he says, "are the world champions of cooperation beyond kinship, and we do it in large part by creating systems of formal and informal accountability.

July 17, 2012

Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind IX: Moral Capital, Blind Spots, and Asking

Moral Capital

July 13, 2012

Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind V: Relationships in a WEIRD Culture

You may not have realized it, but if you are reading this, you are most likely WEIRD, that is, a member of a culture that is Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. The features of WEIRDness can be summed up in the following sentence from Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012): "The WEIRDer you are, the more you see a world full of separate objects, rather than relationships."

July 14, 2012

Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind VI: Fairness and Moral Disgust

Moral Disgust

July 15, 2012

Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind VII: Moral Foundations

Jonathan Haidt in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012), set out a Moral Foundations Theory that posits the existence of moral modules or foundations. In my last post I dealt with the fairness/proportionality foundation.

July 16, 2012

Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind VIII: Groupishness

Government ethics is naturally focused on the selfish aspects of people's conduct, the aspects that make them provide special benefits to themselves, those who help them, and those to whom they feel special obligations. But as Jonathan Haidt argues in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012), people are not just selfish. They're also groupish. And our groupishness causes a lot of problems, as well.

July 27, 2012

Summer Reading: Thirst for Growth

Anyone who has seen the movie Chinatown has some idea how much ethical misconduct went into the ongoing battles over water in California. Those who want to get down to the nitty gritty of it will enjoy Robert Gottlieb and Margaret Fitzsimmon's Thirst for Growth: Water Agencies as Hidden Government in California (Univ. of Arizona Press, 1991).

Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play May 21, 2015

Super PACs Go Local, Big Time

Philadelphia's Democratic mayoral primary this week brings the national focus on Super PACs to the local level. In that primary, which is the most important election in that Democratically-inclined city, most of the money that was spent was spent by Super PACs, not by candidates.

Enforcement & Complaints June 24, 2008

Superior Handling of a Conflict Matter

Too many of my blog entries look at instances where things did not go right. One reason is that when things do go right, no one talks about them. Another reason is that so often ethics problems are not handled very well.

So it's nice to read about the proper handling of a conflict situation in Superior, Wisconsin. I suppose when you live in a town with this name, your aspirations are greater than most cities'.

Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.

Ethics Commissions & Administration April 26, 2009

Supermajority Votes in the Probable Cause Phase of Ethics Enforcement

Requiring supermajority votes by ethics commissions to find probable cause or a violation is probably the best obstacle elected officials can place in the way of effective ethics enforcement. This is especially true of the probable cause phase, if there is one.

Local Government Practice May 31, 2006

Supreme Court Blow to Municipal Employee Dissent

Yesterday, the Supreme Court delivered a blow to municipal government employee rights in its decision in Garcetti et al v.

June 28, 2010

Supreme Court Decision on Honest Services Fraud Should Be Government Ethics Call to Arms

Can they convict him simply for failing to disclose information when he had no duty to disclose? No Alaska law required it, and there's no federal statute that requires it, so what did he do wrong?

Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play January 31, 2008

Supreme Court Justices and Their Campaign Contributions: Can Justice Be Purchased?

Articles have been written putting into question the study on which the following blog entry was based. The Tulane Law Review and Law School have apologized, but the authors, although admitting to their errors, stand by their conclusions and plan to publish a revised version of their law review article, according to an article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

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March 6, 2010

Surprise! Philadelphia Council Drafts New Ethics Bills

Last December, I listed the major recommendations of Philadelphia's Task Force on Ethics and Campaign Finance Reform in its 58-page report.

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December 4, 2012

Taking Responsibility for COGEL Awards

Yesterday, at the annual conference of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL), the only association of state and local government ethics professionals, Judge Anthony Wilhoit was given the COGEL Award, which is given annually to someone who has "made a significant, demonstrable, and positive contribution to the fields of campaign finance, elections, ethics, freedom of information or lobbying for a significant period of time." As the executive director of the Kentucky Legislative Ethics Commission since 1997, Judge Wilhoit has certainly made a substan

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