Ethics Codes

In August, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio granted a former state representative a temporary restraining order with respect to a state revolving door provision that prohibits state representatives from representing anyone other than a state political subdivision before the state legislature for one year after leaving office.

This week, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox announced a "toolbox" for local governments to create local ethics policies. Local government ethics is already governed by state statutes, but local governments can apparently supplement these rules with local laws and ethics boards.

It's official. According to an article in yesterday's Salt Lake City Tribune, a comprehensive ethics reform petition has been okayed for distribution, with the goal of placing it on the November 2010 ballot. That requires 95,000 signatures on a 21-page petition that is far from easy reading.

There is little in government ethics that is more important than recognizing that, unlike other laws, an ethics code provides only minimum standards. That is, a public servant is required to fulfill the letter of an ethics code, but this is just the start. In this way, ethics laws are not like ordinary laws. Why and in what way? Here are two different responses.

Private Interest vs. Public Interest

Here's a short opinion piece by Walter Dellinger, head of the Office of Legal Counsel under Pres. Clinton. It's part of a series of such pieces that will appear in tomorrow's Washington Post. The opinions concern what Pres. Obama should be looking for in his first Supreme Court nominee. After Dellinger's opinion piece, I tie his ideas into government ethics. I think they're very important observations.

In many states without state enforcement of local government ethics, the compromise position pushed particularly by local government officials is to have the state mandate local ethics codes, but let local governments decide what's right for them. The motto of this position is, "One size does not fit all."

A favorite ploy in local government ethics is for a council to vote for an ethics code that includes an ethics commission, and then either not actually appoint members to the commission or, when they resign, not fill their seats, so that there is, effectively, no enforcement mechanism.