Safra Working Papers

Here's a new role for an ethics commission:  mediator in a dispute between other government oversight offices. According to an article in the Advocate last week, New Orleans' ethics board has appointed two of its members to mediate in an ongoing dispute between the city's Inspector General and its new Independent Police Monitor.

Community outreach is usually toward the bottom of a local government ethics commission's priority list.

Government ethics e-newsletters are a good source of ideas, and something worth considering for your local government's ethics commission or ethics officer. Atlanta's new spring 2010 newsletter, Ethics Matters, is a good example of what such an e-newsletter can do.

Ethics Pledges

How often should ethics commissions meet?

The usual answer to that question is, As often as they need to. But how often is that?

That depends on their responsibilities. If all they do is respond to complaints and requests for advisory opinions, then they need only meet when they receive one or the other.

But what about ethics training? Even if they are not required to train or oversee training of local government officials and employees, they need to be trained themselves.

Update: March 1, 2010 (see below)

The political activity of ethics commission members, staff, and ethics officers is an important topic. The issue has arisen this week with respect to Connecticut's Office of State Ethics, according to Jon Lender's Government Watch column in yesterday's Hartford Courant.

This is the place to discuss the Ethics Commission's jurisdiction, powers, and duties.

This is the place to discuss the establishment and the role of an Ethics Commission. The most important issue here is an Ethics Commission's independence: how important it is and how best a municipality can achieve it. With respect to EC independence and competence, please share your thoughts or experiences regarding regional and state Ethics Commissions vs. municipal ECs.

A recent decision of the Wilton, NY ethics board (attached; see below) raises important issues regarding the selection of ethics commission members, their withdrawal from participation when they have a conflict, and the way an ethics commission handles allegations that are not covered by the ethics code.

Allegations That Do Not Constitute Violations

See Update Below
The accusations made by New York's Inspector General that the executive director of New York's Commission on Public Integrity leaked information about an investigation to a close associate of the target of the investigation (the governor) are very upsetting. But there are two important lessons to be learned here.

Independent agencies are more likely than regular government agencies to get into trouble, because they are usually more closed and less supervised. And yet officials too often listen to agencies' calls for independence from ethics programs, as if the "independence" meant something positive that should be respected, rather than that the agencies are unsupervised and unaccountable. An independent agency's independence is only something positive when it is a watchdog agency, like an ethics commission, auditor, or inspector general.

Looking at government ethics through the appearance standard, as Dennis Thompson did in his book Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption, reveals the great importance of independence to ethics advice and enforcement. No one is in a worse position to see appearances of impropriety than someone who considers his motives to be good, and his goals to be of utmost importance.