Transparency & Disclosure

States can make life difficult for local government ethics programs. For example, according to an article in the Baltimore Sun on Sunday, in Maryland, local governments have to use the same rules for access to ethics disclosures as the state does. And the state's rules are designed to prevent access.

This week, Linda Greenhouse pointed out, in a New York Times op-ed piece, that an April 14 decision by the D.C. Circuit could have an effect on campaign finance disclosure. It could have an effect on government ethics disclosure, as well.

Here's a good way to get around local government transparency laws. If you want an appointee's activities to remain secret, let him be hired by a private entity, give money to the private entity sufficient to pay his salary, and don't communicate with him via government-owned computers or smartphones.

Here's another story involving the lack of transparency. This time, the lack of transparency involves a company getting government grants.

They said it couldn't — or, at least, wouldn't — be done, but you can see it for yourself, in living Internet color:  non-required disclosures made by Chicago officials and employees.

Update: January 22, 2014 (see below)

Maryland has a rule that local ethics ordinances must require the disclosure of all an elected official's real property, stocks, and bonds. According to an article in the Carroll County Times, the Mount Airy council keeps passing an ethics ordinance that requires the disclosure only of real property in Mount Airy and surrounding counties, but nowhere else.

Transparency in government should not be limited only to officials. Disclosure rules should also apply to everyone seeking special benefits from government, such as contracts, permits, or grants. For one thing, without transparency on both sides of every transaction, it is impossible for the public or officials to know if there are any conflicts that particular officials need to deal with.

In a quality government ethics program, every official and employee involved in a matter publicly discloses any possible conflict and withdraws from the matter. But what if a city or county does not have a quality government ethics program? How is the public to know whether conflicts are being handled responsibly?

It's a nice coincidence that, just when I was preparing to write a blog post about a trendy thing in the corporate world called "open-book management," the former comptroller of Dixon, IL, Rita Crundwell, pleaded guilty to a federal fraud charge that she siphoned more than $53 million from the town of only 16,000 people (over a period of 21 years), according to an article in the Chicago Tribune.