February 25, 2013

A New, But Very Weak Regional Ethics Program in Connecticut

[Note: I have made changes throughout this blog post, based on a February 25 e-mail message from the COG executive director] It should feel good when a pet idea of yours becomes a reality. My pet idea is the regional ethics program, whose biggest successes have been of the countywide variety, such …
Read more →
February 23, 2013

A Contentious Conflict Situation in Kansas City, KS

Some very interesting issues arise out of a past (and present) conflict situation that has become an issue in this week's mayoral primary in the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, KS ("UG"). The conflict situation appears simple at first glance, but it is not. In 2007, a UG com…
Read more →
Ethics Commissions & Administration February 22, 2013

Post-EC Obligations

Does a former ethics commission member have a special obligation not to make misstatements with respect to government ethics matters? This question arose from a 2010 case in Florida I just came across, where the state senate president hired a former chair of the state ethics commission as his attor…
Read more →
Conflicts of Interest February 22, 2013

Why Revolving Doors Have Governors

According to an article in yesterday's New York Times, U.S. Senate majority leader Harry Reid's spokesman said with respect to questions regarding his hiring of a tax adviser away from General Electric, "The impulse in some quarters to reflexively cast suspicion on private sector experience is part…
Read more →
February 20, 2013

Winter Reading: Switch VII - Self-Evaluation and Identity

Self-Evaluation and Getting One's Bearings To change oneself (and to support change in one's environment), self-evaluation is required. Before you change, you have to have your bearings. The problem is that, unlike evaluation of others, self-evaluation is rarely rational. It is more commonly emotio…
Read more →
February 18, 2013

Winter Reading: Switch V - Simplifying and Motivating

Simplifying Self-Supervision In their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Crown, 2010), Chip and Dan Heath note that self-control or, more accurately, self-supervision is an exhaustible resource. What looks like laziness or selfishness is often simply exhaustion. Self-supervision…
Read more →
February 14, 2013

Winter Reading: Switch IV - Ethics Reform

Why Scandals Lead to Poor Ethics Reform In their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Crown, 2010), Chip and Dan Heath note that John Kotter and Dan Cohen argue in their book The Heart of Change that the sequence of change is not analyze-think-change, which is how most people (inc…
Read more →
February 13, 2013

Winter Reading: Switch III - Goals and Destinations

A Destination for Government Ethics Training Most cities and counties treat ethics training as a one-off phenomenon. Toss a hundred people in a room, give them a lecture about how to be good, and that's it for at least a year or two. One of the case studies in Chip and Dan Heath's book Switch: How …
Read more →
Subscribe to