Advisory Opinions

News from British Columbia provides strong evidence of how difficult it is for anyone to deal with his own conflict situation, even a government ethics professional. No one should think that it is easy for someone to see an appearance of impropriety relating to himself or to respond to a conflict allegation against him in anything but a personal manner. A government ethics program must facilitate the process of dealing responsibly with a conflict situation by allowing, or even requiring, officials to seek neutral, professional advice.

A presidential election day is a good time to consider how vague, character-based ethics rules can be misused.

According to an article in the October 27 Economist, the Iranian constitution, for example, requires a presidential candidate to have the attributes of "trustworthiness and piety." Iraq's requires that a presidential candidate have "a good reputation." And Singapore's president must be a "person of integrity."

Independent agencies, especially those with lots of money to spend and contracts to enter into, require not just ethics policies, but a comprehensive, independent ethics program. This rarely acknowledged fact has been made clear once again by an external audit of an agency that proved completely unable to self-regulate its officials' and employees' conflicts of interest.

An interesting issue has arisen in Louisiana. It involves an important distinction in government ethics, between law and function.

When it comes to post-employment restrictions, a mayor should not be considered as just a member of the legislative or executive branch, no matter what the form of government (strong mayor or mayor-council). A mayor has a special status that sets her apart from other local officials. Post-employment restrictions that apply only to one's branch or agency should not be relevant to a mayor. During the cooling-off period, a mayor should not do business with or lobby the government at all.

Ethics Code Amendment Without a Scandal
Sometimes conflict situations, when they are handled responsibly, lead to changes in an ethics code. This happened recently in Prince William County, Virginia, according to an article on the insidenova.com website.

There is a section of my new book Local Government Ethics Programs (click and scroll down to subsection 9) on the need for more transparency in the provision of ethics advice. What I just realized is that this is another government ethics topic on which Stephen Colbert, who has enlightened the U.S.

Erosion of an ethics program can occur in many ways (see the section of my book on backsliding). In Louisiana (where the state ethics program has jurisdiction over local officials), there has been a great deal of erosion, regarding the ethics board's role in the ethics process, the standard of proof, and the exemption of state legislators to the extent they are involved in legislative activity.

One of the things that always fascinates me is that, while politicians have no problem asking experts legal, financial, engineering, or human resource questions, they feel they know what they need to know about government ethics questions.