City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

August 27, 2015

Summer Reading: Eula Biss's "On Immunity"

Eula Biss's excellent book On Immunity (Graywolf Press, 2014) is not about legislative immunity, but about immunity to diseases. And yet there is a great deal of food for thought in it about municipal ethics. The first parallel can be seen in the "mun" in both "immunity" and "municipal." It comes f…

Local Government Practice August 24, 2015

Private Police Forces and Government Ethics

What are the government ethics implications of private security when it goes beyond protecting specific businesses, malls, universities, and gated communities, becomes an adjunct to or replacement of an ordinary police force, and is done in conjunction with the public police force and, often, using…

Conflicts of Interest August 11, 2015

Conflicted Local Party Committee Members

Conflicts of interest are generally not seen to apply to local party committees. There are almost never limitations on membership or voting on such committees by local government employees, contractors, developers, grantees, or others seeking financial benefits from the government. An article in to…

July 23, 2015

Summer Reading: "Manipulatory Politics"

Robert E. Goodin's book Manipulatory Politics (Yale Univ. Press, 1980) is valuable for its "cataloguing [of] various modes of political manipulation," as the author wrote in his Preface. Goodin found only a few of the cases "ethically worrisome," but the fact that I disagree does not make the catal…

Ethics Commissions & Administration July 15, 2015

A Critique of New Orleans' Ethics Program

David A. Marcello, the Executive Director of the Public Law Center at Tulane University Law School in New Orleans, has been keeping close tabs on New Orleans' troubled ethics program. In 2011, he published a report on how Hurricane Katrina (2005) led New Orleans' officials to turn a moribund ethics…

Conflicts of Interest July 9, 2015

Reality and Perception

Long ago, experts in philosophy, physics, and psychology recognized that reality and perception are not as different as people used to think. And yet people continue to think it. One area where they continue to think it is government ethics. According to an article in the Stamford (CT) Advocate las…

Conflicts of Interest July 6, 2015

It's Not Enough to Not Make an Exception

In an article on the deportation of Haitians from the Dominican Republic in yesterday's New York Times, a police officer agonizes over the prospect of having to deport his best friend, a Haitian immigrant. “I have no choice,” he is quoted as saying. “It saddens me to think about being ordered to de…

June 24, 2015

Summer Reading: Jonathan Rauch on the Positives of Machines

Last month, Jonathan Rauch published a sincere and well-written defense of political machines, entitled "Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy" (Brooking Institution Press; available free as a PDF or e-book). Although the essay scar…

Resources & Learning June 13, 2015

"City of Hope," A Great Local Government Ethics Film

I was fortunate today to see an American film focused almost entirely on local government ethics. Although it is an excellent film, it has not been included in City Ethics' (but not my) Top Ten Ethics Films list or in any of the comments suggesting additions. The film is City of Hope (1991), writte…

Resources & Learning June 12, 2015

Summer Reading: Lee Drutman's "The Business of America Is Lobbying"

Lee Drutman’s The Business of America is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate (2015) is an excellent book about corporate lobbying at the federal level. Drutman is especially good on the reasons for the growth of this lobbying, particularly the reasons wh…

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