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 while we’re growing up (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”), but in government most talk is in terms of ends (Will it raise taxes?). Today’s New York Times has a long feature about America’s comm
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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? Does it lower taxes, provide better services? Or is it just a pain in the neck? Sometimes you need a big disaster – Enron, for example – for people to understand the cost of not acting ethically. Well, we’ve just had another disaster, and once again transparency is at the center of it.
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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, ethically speaking. The same is true of municipal governments, according to James S. Bowman in his essay “The Ethical Professional,” which appears in The Ethics Edge, ed. Jonathan P. West and Evan M.
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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 Jacobs, who died a couple of years ago, gave us a lot to think about. And we’ve been missing out. Jacobs’ book (in the form of a dialogue among a group of people) sets out two separate and opposed, yet symbiotic moral syndromes.
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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 (a distant third) deal-making. He happens to also become the major force behind U.S.
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Conflicts of Interest December 21, 2007

How Much Expertise Is Too Much?

It is natural for a current or former firefighter to be interested in serving on a fire commission, or a current or former teacher in serving on a school board. But is there an ongoing conflict of interest in doing so? The question arose on the Milford, Connecticut school board recently. Three members are former school teachers who held union leadership positions. Click here to read the rest of this blog entry. Another school board member asked them to recuse themselves from hearing union grievances.
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Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play December 21, 2007

Campaign Finance and Favoritism Issues Involving Politicians' Charities

It seems so mean-spirited to talk about the conflicts of interest that arise from politicians’ charitable activities, but the revelations about the Clinton Foundation show, in big numbers, what happens so often, in smaller numbers, across the country. There are limits on how much money one can give to a candidate. But there are no limits on how much money one can give to a candidate’s charity.
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