City Related

There are many perils of an inadequate local government ethics code, as can be seen in Colorado Springs, which passed an ethics code in 2007. Last week, I wrote a blog entry about the new ethics commission's first complaint.

Loyalty is a virtue that is out of place in government, because loyalty is a personal virtue, a virtue that involves one's own personal interest and that of the person one is loyal to.

Loyalty is a particularly difficult issue for local government attorneys, because loyalty is essentially the principal virtue for attorneys. Attorneys' conflicts of interest involve interests that get in the way of complete loyalty to a client.

The two best defenses against dealing responsibly with a conflict are that the local government attorney told me it was okay, and I didn't know there was a conflict. The first can be dealt with by getting the local government attorney out of the government ethics picture. But the second requires something few local government ethics codes require: applicant disclosure.

Updates below (latest on August 11, 2009)

One great thing about the Internet is that it provides a clear picture of how people respond to officials who do not deal responsibly with their conflicts of interest, and how such irresponsible actions can undermine people's trust in government.

Technicalities should play little role in discussions about local government ethics. But because there are ethics laws, people unashamedly talk about ethics technicalities. They see ethics laws as like any other law, not as minimal requirements that deserve more thinking about what's appropriate than about what's legal.

Earlier this week, I wrote about an application of Louisiana ethics law that I felt was too severe. Today I'm going to write about a Louisiana ethics provision, a fairly typical gift provision that applies to local government officials, which is too weak, because it has a big loophole in it.

Ethical Leadership

In Louisiana, local government officials cannot do any sort of business with anyone who does business with their local government. This position is supported by a settlement reached with an Alexandria council member, according to an article at thetowntalk.com.

In March, I started out a blog entry by saying that "I thought I might write a piece about using ethics complaints for the purpose of political harassment" with respect to Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. But then I discovered that the particular ethics complaint was legitimate, and talked about the complaint itself and how it applied to local government situations.