Enforcement & Complaints June 1, 2009

The Many Problems with Ethics Proceeding Confidentiality Rules

In a  recent blog post, I wrote about the fining of the executive director of Philadelphia's board of ethics for violating confidentiality rules. That blog post focused on dealing responsibly with a possible violation of an ethics code provision (although not actually an ethics provision, but instead a disciplinary rule). Now I would like to focus on confidentiality rules and penalties in the government ethics context, and the many constitutional, policy, and logical problems these rules and penalties run into.
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Resources & Learning May 30, 2009

Moral Imagination

Due to President Obama, the word "empathy" is getting tossed around a lot lately. What interests me is that his definition of the word "empathy" is central to what ethicists call "moral imagination." And moral imagination is central to government ethics.

Here's Pres. Obama's definition of "empathy" from his book The Audacity of Hope:
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May 29, 2009

Ottawa: A Mayor on Trial Refuses to Deal Responsibly with an Unrelated Conflict

Ottawa is currently in the grips of its mayor's influence-peddling trial. The allegations are that the mayor tried to get another mayoral candidate out of the race by offering him money and a federal position. The Ottawa Citizen has an excellent chronology of what allegedly occurred. There is a lot of evidence, but most of it appears to be hearsay, at least so far. But I'm more interested in an unrelated ethics matter that occurred a couple of months ago.
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May 28, 2009

The Rotten Tree Known as Parliament

There is a bright side to the British Parliament expenses scandal. For one thing, many M.P.'s had the fortitude to walk right by that enormous parliamentary trough and eat at home instead.

Second, Parliament showed the world how a failure to do the right thing and do it transparently — seek larger incomes — and instead to take public money clandestinely and then, when news started leaking out, to deny and obfuscate, can completely undermine trust in a public institution.
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Ethics Commissions & Administration May 26, 2009

In Dependence: Ethics Directors, Their Commissions and Politicians

One of the big stories in government ethics this week involves an attempt in Tennessee to consolidate the state ethics and campaign finance commissions, which on its face sounds like a good way to save money during these tough times. But when politicians deal with ethics laws and bodies, things are rarely that simple, especially when the state's ethics director is fired in the midst of the debate.
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