City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

February 2, 2008

ERC's 2008 National Government Ethics Study Released

The President of City Ethics, Carla Miller, recently participated in the 2007 NGES Advisory Group in the review of the Ethics Resource Center's first National Government Ethics Study which was released Jan. 30, 2008. You can download a copy by registering at the ERC's website: http://www.ethics.org…

February 1, 2008

New National Government Ethics Survey Shows That Too Few Local Governments Have Strong Ethical Cultures

The Ethics Resource Center’s first National Government Ethics Survey has just come out, and is available free at the ERC’s website, although it requires registration. It is the result of a random 2007 telephone poll of government employees, and is part of a series of polls looking at ethics in diff…

Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play January 31, 2008

Supreme Court Justices and Their Campaign Contributions: Can Justice Be Purchased?

Articles have been written putting into question the study on which the following blog entry was based. The Tulane Law Review and Law School have apologized, but the authors, although admitting to their errors, stand by their conclusions and plan to publish a revised version of their law review art…

Conflicts of Interest January 29, 2008

Commercial Bail Bond System: Local Corruption and Ends vs. Rules

The most important division in ethics is between ends-based approaches (consequentialist or teleological, best known as "the ends justify the means") and rules-based approaches (deontological). The most important problem for individuals in government is that we are taught rules-based approaches whi…

Transparency & Disclosure January 28, 2008

Transparency -- Another Disaster Shows Us How Important It Is

Transparency is often seen as a technical, often annoying part of municipal ethics. All those notices and agendas that have to be filed at the right time in the right place, all those document requests from the news media and opposition parties. Is all this really necessary for good government? Doe…

January 28, 2008

ERC Releases Report:

The Ethics Resource Center in Washington DC has released an interesting document for anyone active in the Ethics & Compliance Officer field - see the quotes below which give a taste of the subject of the document: Note that they have removed the link to the paper. It may be elsewhere... [quote=The …

Local Government Practice January 10, 2008

Municipal Governments Can Grow Up, Too

Has your city’s government grown up yet, ethically speaking? This isn't as silly a question as it sounds. All of us develop morally, just as we develop physically and intellectually and emotionally. We just don’t see our height grow or get university degrees or get married and have children, ethica…

Resources & Learning January 2, 2008

Book Review: Jane Jacobs' Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics

Not one of the recent books in my ethics library cites Jane Jacobs’ 1993 work, Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics. The citations I found on-line do not include any about government ethics. This is a big loss for the government ethics community, because…

December 26, 2007

Government Ethics and Charlie Wilson's War

I would like to nominate the new film Charlie Wilson’s War, a Mike Nichols film starring Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Julia Roberts, for the City Ethics Top Ten Ethics Films list. Charlie Wilson is a multi-term congressman whose principal activities are drinking, diddling, and …

Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play December 24, 2007

New angle for Conflicts of Interest & Campaign Finance

In a very interesting step recently, the "Zionsville Town Council approved 5-0 Monday, Dec. 3, an expanded conflict of interest policy that includes a clause urging council members to recuse themselves from any vote involving a campaign contributor." Read the entire story here: https://www.reporter…

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