City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

February 22, 2012

Quote of the Day

I did stop and and try to invoke legislative immunity, but the camera would have none of it.

—State senator Steve King of Grand Junction, CO, a career police officer, said jokingly about a red-light-camera ticket he received in Denver. He voted against banning red-light cameras in Colorado's municipalities. From an article in the Denver Post yesterday.

Ethics Codes & Reform February 20, 2012

Embracing Friction

Efficiency is good, but sometimes friction is better. This is a basic statement of the argument made in a New York Times op-ed piece yesterday by Barry Schwartz, a psych professor at Swarthmore best known for his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.

February 17, 2012

Federal Decision on Citizens and the Attorney-Client Privilege

Music to my ears in an order yesterday from the federal court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, in a case involving an unsuccessful attempt by certain Wisconsin state legislators to claim the attorney-client privilege with respect to documents relating to redistricting. What resonates so nicely is the way the court considered state citizens to be the client of the private lawyer.

Conflicts of Interest February 17, 2012

The Conflicts of a Newspaper Owner with Governmental Interests

Newspapers aren't called the fourth estate for nothing. But in cities these days, they are more like the third estate, more important, that is, than the clergy. In fact, their investigations and editorials can bring down mayors, council presidents, even parties.

Local dailies may be losing money hand over fist, and weeklies, online papers, and blogs have taken away some of their power, but the dailies still have more power with respect to politicians and policies than anyone else.

February 16, 2012

The Problems with a New Report on Chicago's Level of Corruption

What is corruption? I try not to use this word with respect to government ethics, because it is commonly thought of as having to do with criminal misconduct such as bribery, kickbacks, fraud, and embezzlement. There is, however, the term "institutional corruption," which deals with legal misconduct that undermines public trust. And right there in the middle is government ethics, which involves illegal but not criminal misconduct. All very confusing.

Ethics Codes & Reform February 11, 2012

Institutional Corruption Conference IV: A Weakness of Compliance Systems

At the Institutional Corruption conference sponsored by Harvard's Safra Ethics Center last Saturday, Ann Tenbrunsel, co-author of Blind Spots (see my blog posts on this book), noted that people act not only against what is written in ethics codes, but also against their own values. And they don't realize they're doing it. She portrayed the process by which we act as broken into three phases: prediction, action, and recollection. In the first and third phases, we tend to think in terms of values.

Ethics Codes & Reform February 10, 2012

Institutional Corruption Conference III: Cultures of Loyalty and Mutual Trust

At the Institutional Corruption Conference sponsored by Harvard's Safra Center last Saturday, Bruce Cain, a professor at UC Berkeley, pointed out that the permeable boundary between government and business (and, I would add, business law) brings into government many individuals who have a different concept of ethics. That is, in the business world, loyalty to one's supervisors (or clients) and to the company is the most important thing. In government, loyalty should be to the public. Of course, this is not loyalty as we know it, so loyalty should be suppressed as much as possible.

Ethics Codes & Reform February 8, 2012

Institutional Corruption Conference II: Definition and Diagnosis

Lawrence Lessig, who heads the Safra Center and hosted the event, started by defining institutional corruption as:

A situation where influences within an economy of influence tend to weaken the effectiveness of an institution, especially by weakening public trust of the institution.

This is an academic definition.

Ethics Commissions & Administration February 7, 2012

Proximity to One's Own Ethics Program

Proximity rules are common to local and state government ethics codes nationwide (see my blog post on them from five years ago). They require officials to withdraw from any matter dealing with property within a certain distance of property they own or rent, no matter how many others have property within the same proximity.

Ethics Codes & Reform February 6, 2012

Institutional Corruption Conference I: Duplicitous Exclusion

On Saturday, I attended a one-day conference on Institutional Corruption sponsored by the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University (videos of it will eventually appear here). Although local government was scarcely mentioned (there was one image of a painting that portrayed the 1930s machine in Kansas City, MO), many ideas that were discussed are applicable to local government ethics.

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