Local Government Practice

With apologies to Louisiana, since this week I've already focused on its legislators' dispute with its Board of Ethics, I'm going to return to the state to discuss a situation where local government ethics can make a great difference. On the front page of today's New York Times, an article looks at reasons why so little money has made it from Washington to local government infrastructure projects in Louisiana (the article ignores Mississippi and Alabama).

Early on, I did a blog entry on apology. I even included apology in 107(1) of the Model Ethics Code, as a stated option for officials, so that their municipality does not have to go to the trouble of investigating their actions and holding hearings. Yesterday, I attended a lecture by Nancy Berlinger of the Hastings Center in Garrison, NY on apology in the medical context.

The highest median income in 2005, and the fastest-growing county in the United States between 2000 and 2005. How does that translate in terms of local government ethics? Sadly, not very well. The county is Loudoun in Virginia (principal town: Leesburg), not far from Washington, D.C. Although the issue politics is all about the pace of development (sold as "property rights"), the people politics has been all about connections with developers and realtors. Loudoun County provides an excellent way of examining what to look for, ethically, if your city or county is growing fast.

One of the best ways to create a more ethical environment in local government is to have more people run for office. The more people who run for office, the more pressure is put on the closed world that many local governments preserve. This closed world is preserved through the lack of interest not only of voters, but also of potential candidates, who feel the only way to get elected is to know the right people in the right way.

A survey commissioned by Tiller, a consulting company that specializes in what it calls "cause commerce," found a gaping leadership void when it comes to social responsibility. People want to do more good, get more involved in their communities, but they don't know how, the survey concludes. And according to Tiller, business is uniquely positioned to fill the leadership void. Or is it? Isn't that what government is for?

Many officials face a conflict every evening they have a meeting scheduled: between their obligation to attend a meeting of a board they sit on and their desire to do one of a number of different things. Many officials choose something else often enough that it has an effect on the board's effectiveness. Please share your thoughts about this provision, and your experiences with problems involving meeting attendance and various attempts to deal with these problems.

100(20).

As canaries were to mines, apologies are to a municipality's ethical environment. If you don't see a good number of sincere apologies, then ethics and accountability are probably dead in your town.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court delivered a blow to municipal government employee rights in its decision in Garcetti et al v.

Terry L. Price's new book, Understanding Ethical Failures in Leadership (Cambridge University Press, 2006), provoked in me a great deal of thinking about what is behind the ethical failures of elected and appointed municipal officials. I will be talking in terms of officials, but Price speaks only in terms of leaders in general, with an emphasis on governmental leaders. His central thesis is that such ethical failures are fundamentally cognitive rather than volitional, that is, they come not out of selfishness or will, but out of mistaken beliefs and limited knowledge.

Community Outreach: Public schools

Model Student Ethics Commission Program (MSECP)

The program is designed to teach and to engage students in the policies and issues concerning ethics, good governance and accountability in the administration of government. Students will review case studies regarding ethical dilemmas, identify solutions to various ethical issues within the local to international arenas and participate in mock public hearings to discuss/debate public policy issues.