Ethics Commissions & Administration

One nearly untouchable aspect of government ethics is the role of parties. This is less a problem in municipalities than at other levels of government, because most municipalities in the U.S. are nonpartisan, although parties still play a role. But many municipalities and, in some states, particularly in the Northeast, all municipalities are still partisan. And most counties are partisan, as well. In many cases, partisanship and local government are hard to separate.

If anyone questions the value of advice regarding municipal ethics issues, look at these statistics from the Atlanta Ethics Office. 66% of ethics complaints filed in 2007 alleged use of city property. 3% of the requests for advice in 2007 involved use of city property. If only people would ask. At least, Atlanta has an Ethics Officer to ask. My guess is that people who want to make use of city property don’t want to be told they can’t. They know the answer, so they don’t ask.

The Jacksonville Daily Record today published a story covering the first ethics training since the new code revisions were ratified by Council on Tuesday last week. "Miller instructed the Council staff not to get too bogged down in the technicalities of the law, but to adopt an overall ethical mind set to help guide their decision-making."

I've just finished reading a book called Illicit by Moises Naim, about the trafficking of everything from people and drugs to artworks and counterfeit DVDs . One of the things Naim focuses on is why governments have so much trouble putting a dent into any of these types of trafficking. The principal reason is the structure of relationships. Government bureaucracies lose out to increasingly flexible networks of individuals. In the municipal ethics world, the situation is similar, but even worse outside the larger cities.

Louisiana legislators do not seem to like the state Board of Ethics. Earlier this year, two of them sued the Board of Ethics, based on a decision it made. Now the Legislature has passed a bill clearly intended to get rid of the Board's chief counsel, Gray Sexton. The first version of the bill, House Bill 532, required that Sexton no longer do outside work after August 2008. The bill was amended to require that Sexton disclose all of his private legal clients in the interim.

Having politicians on the Queensbury, NY Ethics Board has created a mess.

Who should and who should not sit on elections commissions? Other than land-use commissions (and, sadly, ethics commissions), elections commissions are probably the most abused in terms of membership. Take the election commission in Hamblen County, according to the March 7-10, 2007 entries in the noe4accountability blog. It has five members.

Ethics problems and the need for ethics programs are the stuff of cities and, perhaps, larger towns, or so most people think. In small towns, everyone knows everyone else, and people can't get away with unethical conduct. And as for corruption, there simply aren't enough zeros in the town's budget. There's not much to learn from small towns, in terms of municipal ethics. Right? Middletown Springs, Vermont is a town of 823 (2000 census), and yet its town meeting voted on a proposed conflicts of interest ordinance this month.

As I state in my comments to section 207 of the model code, cutting the funding of ethics commissions is a popular way for politicians to prevent investigations from happening.