Safra Working Papers | City Ethics

Transparency & Disclosure January 28, 2008

Transparency -- Another Disaster Shows Us How Important It Is

Transparency is often seen as a technical, often annoying part of municipal ethics. All those notices and agendas that have to be filed at the right time in the right place, all those document requests from the news media and opposition parties. Is all this really necessary for good government? Does it lower taxes, provide better services? Or is it just a pain in the neck? Sometimes you need a big disaster – Enron, for example – for people to understand the cost of not acting ethically. Well, we’ve just had another disaster, and once again transparency is at the center of it.

February 18, 2011

Transparency and Confidential Information Issues in Clackamas County, OR

Transparency, although not generally part of a local ethics code, is central to a local government's ethics environment. A lack of transparency is both a tell-tale sign that things are wrong, and an impediment to discussing ethics issues and enforcing ethics violations. Unfortunately, ethics codes do have confidential information provisions, making it appear to those who do not understand government ethics that it is more important to hide confidential information than to let the sunshine in.

Transparency & Disclosure April 5, 2008

Transparency vs. Fear

New York politicians are making life hard for ethical politicians. “Present yourself as ethical,” they are effectively telling them, “and everyone will be harder on you when you don’t live up to expectations.

Transparency & Disclosure June 27, 2010

Transparency, Anonymity, and Moral Courage

In my recent blog post on Maricopa County, I referred to the problem of harassment and intimidation by government officials against other government officials and employees. I have also referred in the past to the even more serious problem of harassment, intimidation, and ad hominem attacks by government officials against citizens.

May 27, 2012

Treating Inmates as Commodities in Louisiana Is a Local Government Ethics Problem

Louisiana Incarcerated is an investigative series that ran recently in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. It is a story rooted in an extremely poor ethics environment that, despite vaunted ethics reforms (that many, including me, have criticized), does not seem to have changed.

The series has introduced into popular culture the term "honey hole," one sheriff's description of the cells in his prison, which is the sheriff's biggest revenue generator.

Ethics Codes & Reform December 3, 2011

Treating Institutional Problems as Institutional Problems

According to an article in Parsippany (NJ) Life, a Parsippany school board member filed an ethics complaint against himself with the state's School Ethics Commission. Is this odd course of action the best way to bring transparency to the school board, an institutional rather than personal problem?

July 19, 2012

Trenton's Ethics Environment in a Timeline

According to an article in the Times of Trenton yesterday, the FBI raided the homes of Trenton's mayor, as well as the homes of his brother and a major campaign contributor.

Enforcement & Complaints July 11, 2011

Trust and the Independence of Ethics Enforcement

The way elected officials often think about government ethics enforcement, it's almost as if they weren't being investigated and given a hearing, but were being stoned. And in a certain sense, that is what is happening.

Local Government Practice January 11, 2011

Trust and the Us-Them Mentality

Oxytocin is a hormone released by the hypothalamus portion of the brain which, among other things, makes people trust each other more. In other words, one could argue that local government ethics seeks to increase the release of oxytocin in the brains of people when they think about their local government.

Local Government Practice March 31, 2007

Trust in the Face of Disaster

With apologies to Louisiana, since this week I've already focused on its legislators' dispute with its Board of Ethics, I'm going to return to the state to discuss a situation where local government ethics can make a great difference. On the front page of today's New York Times, an article looks at reasons why so little money has made it from Washington to local government infrastructure projects in Louisiana (the article ignores Mississippi and Alabama).

Conflicts of Interest July 20, 2008

Trusting Public Boards of Trustees in San Diego County

You know you're in trouble when a grand jury foreman says about you, "They need an independent organization to be an oversight ..., not just the grand jury doing it once every few years."

Of course, the "they" here are local government agencies: five community college districts in San Diego County, whose boards of trustees are elected.

Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.

Ethics Codes & Reform May 12, 2009

Truth Is Too Slippery, and Too Precious, A Thing to Enforce

The biggest thing missing from ethics codes is lying. Everyone agrees that a government official or employee who lies lacks integrity, but ethics codes almost never prohibit this.

It isn't that lying is okay, it's just very hard to enforce. Defending a lie leads to more lies and other forms of dishonesty. It can get really ugly.

Ethics Codes & Reform August 7, 2008

Truth-Telling

A lie to protect oneself or to mislead others in one's own interest is as bald a conflict of interest as there can be. But since it usually involves no money, and since it is hard to prove the difference between a lie and a mistake in knowledge or interpretation (which is why the word "lie" is never used; "misrepresentation" and "false statement" are preferred terms), a lie is almost never a violation of a government ethics code. In addition, most people don't seem to think lying is such a bad thing. After all, we all do it, and we all know that politicians do little else.

Ethics Codes & Reform July 18, 2009

Trying to Do Too Much in an Ethics Code

One problem local governments have in drafting ethics codes is that they want it to be too many things, to serve too many purposes. They want it to be an aspirational code of conduct, making local government more civil and government officials more honest and fair. They want it to make officials follow all relevant laws and constitutional provisions. And they want it to deal with conflicts of interest, that is, with the situations where personal interests may be placed above the public interest.

Ethics Commissions & Administration April 23, 2014

Turning a Predicament into a Problem

Reading in The Economist a distinction made by Paul Kingsnorth, a leader of the uncivilization movement, a response to climate change, made me wonder whether it is also important with respect to government ethics. His distinction is between a "problem" and a "predicament." A "problem" is something that can be solved. A "predicament" is something that must be endured, for which there is no real solution. When faced with a predicament, the appropriate response is not to try to solve it, but rather to accept it and feel grief for what is lost because of it.

Ethics Codes & Reform August 20, 2009

Tweak or Landmark Reform?

According to an article in yesterday's Chicago Sun-Times, Illinois Gov. Quinn called the new ethics bill he signed a "landmark" change to the state's political culture. However, Patrick Collins, whom Quinn had named to chair the commission that recommended these ethics reforms and many more, called the new ethics provisions "tweaks to the system. ... What we always were advocating for was game-changing reform."

Ethics Codes & Reform March 1, 2012

Two Aspects of a Poor Ethics Environment

I never know where I'm going to find something that inspires a blog post on local government ethics. This time it was an essay by Tim Parks in the March 8 issue of the New York Review of Books, as well as on the NYRBlog.

March 2, 2010

Two Calls for Ethics Commission Resignations

Update: March 4, 2010
I am placing this update up front because my consideration of the Committee of Seventy's criticism of the Philadelphia ethics board assumed the truth of the Committee's portrayal of the city's retirement law. Sadly, it turns out that it misrepresented the law, saying that the ethics board was unethically employing a loophole, when the ethics board's rehiring of its general counsel is expressly legal according to the retirement law.

October 29, 2009

Two Case Studies

Here are two interesting local government ethics case studies from matters in the news this week.

A Job Can Effectively Be a Gift

Conflicts of Interest January 8, 2014

Two Complex Conflict Situations in Montpelier, VT

According to a recent Reader Supported News article, ethics allegations have been made in Montpelier regarding two high-level officials. Both allegations are worthy of a closer look.