City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

September 7, 2013

A New D.C. Ethics Reform Bill

On April 17, the District of Columbia ethics board filed recommendations for ethics reform with the council (see my blog post on the recommendations). Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie has introduced a bill that includes some of these recommendations (attached; see below). On October 7, a hearing o…

Enforcement & Complaints September 5, 2013

Dealing Responsibly with an Ethics Violation

Here's a what-not-to-do scenario of a sort that is too rarely included in ethics training. And yet it's one that could save a lot of officials, as well as ethics programs, a great deal of trouble, and help maintain public trust in local government. According to an article in Tuesday's Miami Herald,…

Conflicts of Interest September 5, 2013

Summer Reading: Government Lawyers and Confidentiality

I did a huge amount of reading this summer for a paper I wrote for the journal Public Integrity (and otherwise). The first piece of reading I'm going to talk about is one of the otherwise. Washington University in St. Louis law professor Kathleen Clark's law review article, "Confidentiality Norms a…

Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play September 4, 2013

Local Public Financing Programs Make Elections More Local

When people write about public campaign financing programs, they tend to focus on participation percentages and the size of the campaign contributions. But what is most interesting about the analysis done by the New Haven Independent of campaign contributions given to mayoral candidates participati…

Conflicts of Interest September 4, 2013

Subcontractors and Indirect Benefits

Ethics provisions dealing with contracts often ignore subcontractors. This leaves open a big loophole, through which an official can get a big piece of a contract by hiding behind a contractor. This is part of a larger problem: ignoring indirect benefits. According to an article put up last night o…

Ethics Commissions & Administration September 3, 2013

An Advisory Opinion Concerning Constituent Services

On August 29, the D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability issued an advisory opinion on the important and far too overlooked topic of constituent services (attached; see below). The issuing of advisory opinions that cover more than a very specific set of facts, what I call "general advis…

Ethics Codes & Reform August 30, 2013

Should the Josephson Institute's Principles of Public Ethics Be Enforceable Rules?

Should the Josephson Institute's Five Principles of Public Ethics be enforceable by a local government? And if not, why not? Article I of Allen Park, MI's charter consists of the five Josephson Institute principles, plus one more about "congeniality and productivity." Here are the five Josephson pr…

Ethics Codes & Reform August 29, 2013

The New ASPA Code of Ethics

It came to my attention in an interview with Professor James Svara, for a paper I am writing for the journal Public Integrity, that in March 2013, the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) made substantial — sometimes beneficial, sometimes harmful, sometimes baffling — changes to its Co…

Ethics Commissions & Administration August 28, 2013

Ethics Advice, Power, and Ideology

Within Election Law Center blogger Christian Adams' recent ad hominem attack on me is an idea that is worth discussing. He said that, in requiring candidate committees to come to me for permission (what is commonly referred to as "ethics advice") when I was the administrator of a public campaign fi…

Conflicts of Interest August 20, 2013

Nepotism: Definition, Exceptions, Waiver

There are two ways to write a nepotism provision. One is to have a short, straightforward prohibition, and allow requests for a waiver under special circumstances. The most frequent circumstance would be a small town or school system where there are not a lot of prospective employees to choose from…

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