Ethics Codes & Reform

In detailing aspirational ethics -- that is, ethical conduct that will not be enforced by the Ethics Commission -- this Model Code goes a step beyond a declaration of policy and purpose. It includes the full text of the American Society for Public Administration's aspirational ethics code.

This is the place to discuss the protection from mistreatment by superiors of municipal employees who file complaints or act as witnesses in ethics proceedings. Significant issues include the need and effectiveness of such protection, and the language necessary to make it effective as well as to prevent officials and employees from hiding behind it to make political attacks. Please share your experiences with various sorts of whistle-blower protection, as well as with instances where the lack of it has made a serious difference.

110. Whistle-Blower Protection.

1.

Following Mark Davies, I have placed definitions not at the front of the Code, where they usually appear, but at the end of the Ethics Provisions section. The reasoning behind this choice is that definitions should not be as important as they often are. Often, definitions include significant content, so that officials and employees must read the definitions before they can know what they are required to do. It is better to have officials focus on the plain meaning of ethics provisions, knowing that no extra duties will be imposed in the definitions, that there are no traps hidden there.

This is the place to comment on the Model Code's miscellaneous provisions, and to suggest different language as well as additional provisions.

218. Miscellaneous Provisions.

1. No existing right or remedy may be lost, impaired, or affected by reason of this code. 2.

This is the place to comment on, discuss, and share alternative content and language relating to the declarations of policy that can usually be found at the beginnning of municipal ethics codes. Most declarations are very short and often ignored, since they cannot be enforced. But they are important in showing the community why ethical conduct is more important than just being good and fair.

Below is Robert Wechsler's introduction to the Model Municipal Ethics Code. This is the place to comment on issues raised and positions taken in this introdcution. Introduction Since most cities already have an ethics code, why is there a need for a model code? Because, as Mark Davies has so effectively argued, a poor ethics code, one that seems to be something it is not, is worse than no ethics code at all.

City Ethics' Model Code Project assumes that an ethics code is central to municipal ethics programs. But this raises several issues. How important is an ethics code to an ethics program? Can an effective ethical environment be created without any sort of written ethics code?

One of the most serious problems with municipal ethics codes is their unreadability. Few of those who write them seem to consider the capabilities of the code's audience: municipal officials and employees without a legal education. In 1998, the Securities and Exchange Commission insisted that documents intended to disclose information to the public should be written in plain English, and to help with the process, it put together a Plain English Handbook: How to Create Clear SEC Disclosure Documents (www.sec.gov/pdf/handbook.pdf).

Has any one had any experience where the government unit has oursourced what would normally be considered a government activity and then imposed the government's ethics policy on the contractor?