City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

June 18, 2012

Loyalty and Plausible Deniability on the 40th Anniversary of Watergate

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. For those too young to remember, President Nixon's re-election campaign had people break in to the Democratic National Committee's offices in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. According to an editorial in the Fort Wayne Journal G…

Local Government Practice June 15, 2012

Doing What Isn't Required

Possibly the most important single thing in government ethics is the recognition that just because something isn't required, it doesn't mean you can't do it, and that just because something is not expressly prohibited, it doesn't mean you can do it. This is an expanded version of what I've often ta…

Ethics Commissions & Administration June 14, 2012

Legislative Bodies Should Not Be Providing Ethics Waivers

Erosion of an ethics program can occur in many ways (see the section of my book on backsliding). In Louisiana (where the state ethics program has jurisdiction over local officials), there has been a great deal of erosion, regarding the ethics board's role in the ethics process, the standard of proo…

Conflicts of Interest June 14, 2012

When An EC Member's Appointing Authority Comes Before the Commission

According to Courthouse News Service articles Tuesday and yesterday, former Georgia ethics commission executive secretary Stacey Kalberman and her deputy, Sherry Ellen Streicker, filed suits against the commission and its chair, Patrick Millsaps, for retaliating against their attempt to investigate…

Conflicts of Interest June 13, 2012

Participation in a Matter, and Seeking Ethics Advice

One of the things that always fascinates me is that, while politicians have no problem asking experts legal, financial, engineering, or human resource questions, they feel they know what they need to know about government ethics questions. Take D.C. council member Vincent Orange. According to an ar…

Enforcement & Complaints June 12, 2012

Outside Auditors and Local Government Ethics

Despite writing this blog for six years, I keep finding important areas of government ethics that I have not discussed. One such area involves dealing with the possible conflicts of outside auditors. Large cities and counties have internal auditors or comptrollers, but most local governments employ…

June 11, 2012

A New Government Ethics Report from a New Florida Organization

In recent years, Florida's elected officials have shown a great deal of leadership in the field of unethical and criminal misconduct. The state has a weak state ethics commission, which has jurisdiction over local officials, and until recently only one good local government ethics program, in Miami…

June 9, 2012

Summer Reading: Judith Shklar's "The Faces of Injustice"

I recently read Judith N. Shklar's book The Faces of Injustice (Yale U.P., 1990). This excellent essay about the difference between misfortune and injustice would not appear to have much to do with government ethics. But there turns out to be much relevant food for thought. The principal difference…

Conflicts of Interest June 6, 2012

Indirect Benefits, Expertise, and the Responsibility for Poor Ethics Advice

Update: June 20, 2012 (see below) The saying goes that there are two sides to every story. But more commonly there is a story and ways to spin the story. The problem is telling them apart. This week, a Daily Oklahoman editorial took to task the state ethics commission, which has jurisdiction over l…

Ethics Commissions & Administration June 6, 2012

Ethics Guidance For and Jurisdiction Over Independent Agencies

Independent agencies are more likely than regular government agencies to get into trouble, because they are usually more closed and less supervised. And yet officials too often listen to agencies' calls for independence from ethics programs, as if the "independence" meant something positive that sh…

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