Local Government Practice

The second edition of this comprehensive book about local government ethics programs. And it's free! See more details here: Local Government Ethics Programs 2.0,

An op-ed piece in the New York Times Sunday Review today looks at whistleblowing from the perspective of whether people lean toward fairness or loyalty (those who lean to fairness are more likely to blow the whistle on misconduct). This is, of course, a simplistic approach, but valuable nevertheless. What is especially valuable is the authors' recommendation of reframing whistleblowing. They want to reframe it "as an act of 'larger loyalty' to the greater good.

Kudos to the editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for inventing a new local government ethics term in an editorial yesterday. The term is "dyscronia."

Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said yesterday, in reference to a sting operation that led to the arrest of several elected officials in New York City and the village of Spring Valley, NY, “A show-me-the-money culture seems to pervade every level of government.” However, that's not really the moral of the story.

The arrest of Miami Beach's former procurement director last October may not be news, but there's a lot to be learned from this case. The issues include personal discretion, alternatives to fully competitive bidding, access to information, and debarment rules.

In February, I wrote seven blog posts applying some of the concepts and practices of nonviolence to the field of government ethics. This is effectively an eighth post. This time the inspiration is not a book, but the latest issue of the journal New Routes, entitled "Peace Without Borders: Regional Peacebuilding in Focus."

It's been a few years since I wrote about the problems with the partisan, or "bipartisan," administration of local elections. One thing that arisen from this year's election is a strong feeling that it is high time that New York City's Board of Elections be reformed. Hopefully, this process will get a great deal of publicity, and become a guide for other communities.

Several years ago, one of my town's department heads was arrested for embezzlement of funds. When someone had reported to the first selectman (effectively the mayor) that this was going on, the first selectman went to the department head and asked him if the report was true. The department head denied it. And the matter was dropped.

Did the first selectman have an obligation to the public not to accept his department head's word, but instead dig deeper to find out the truth, or have this done by the appropriate authorities?

An interesting case in Iowa raises questions about the purposes behind post-employment, or "revolving door," provisions, including whom they are supposed to protect and why.

Update: Counsel for the Housing Authority informed me that it was the Authority board, through him, that originally notified HUD of problems, and that another counsel was involved in some of the relevant transactions. Therefore, I have made some changes to the original post.