City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

August 22, 2011

Habits of the Heart I: Citizen Participation and Public Trust (Summer Reading)

I recently read an important social science classic, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life by Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton (Univ. of California Press, 1985; second edition 1996). Among other things, Habits of t…

Ethics Codes & Reform August 18, 2011

The Importance of Characterizing an Ethics Provision

How you present an ethics provision can make all the difference. Take a pay-to-play ordinance proposed in Fort Wayne, which would limit the amount of contributions and gifts that can be given to city officials by an individual or entity if it wants to have a no-bid contract with the city. A council…

August 14, 2011

Ethics in Congress VI - Quotations and Ideas (Summer Reading)

My last post about Dennis F. Thompson's book Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption is a miscellany of interesting quotes and valuable ideas. Study on the Effect of Allegations on Voting: "Campaign and conflict of interest violations produced losses [for those accused of t…

August 13, 2011

Ethics in Congress V - Constituent Service (Summer Reading)

Constituent service is a basic legislative role that I have pretty much ignored in my blog (click here to read the principal exception). Government ethics focuses too much on votes and self-serving conduct, and too little on the ways in which council members and other government officials help thei…

August 12, 2011

Ethics in Congress IV - The Damaging Individual Corruption Paradigm (Summer Reading)

In his book Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption, Dennis Thompson discusses two tendencies that lead to the overlooking or obscuring of institutional corruption’s significance. Those who bring or judge charges tend to individualize misconduct. This limits the wrongdoing t…

Ethics Commissions & Administration August 11, 2011

Getting the Word Out to Lawyers

The American Bar Association Journal does a list of the best law-related blogs each year, and I thought I'd ask my readers to help get this list to work for a good cause: getting more lawyers to learn about local government ethics. City Ethics will get nothing out of being named to the list. To see…

Ethics Commissions & Administration August 11, 2011

Ethics in Congress III - Independent Advice and Enforcement (Summer Reading)

Looking at government ethics through the appearance standard, as Dennis Thompson did in his book Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption, reveals the great importance of independence to ethics advice and enforcement. No one is in a worse position to see appearances of improp…

Ethics Codes & Reform August 10, 2011

Ethics in Congress II - The Principles of Legislative Ethics and the Appearance Standard

In my first post on Dennis Thompson's book Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption, I quoted him as saying, "What makes the conduct improper is institutional in the sense that it violates principles that promote the distinctive purposes of the institution." What are these pr…

Ethics Codes & Reform August 10, 2011

Ethics in Congress I - Institutional Corruption (Summer Reading)

My second volume of summer reading is a classic, Dennis F. Thompson's Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption (1995). Despite the book's title, Thompson (a professor at Harvard) has a great deal to say about government ethics that is equally applicable to city and county leg…

Conflicts of Interest August 3, 2011

The Potential Conflicts of Georgia's Community Improvement Districts

In Georgia, Community Improvement Districts (CIDs) are a creation of state government (they're in the amended 1984 state constitution) that involves local governments in serious potential conflicts of interest, in order to allow developers to fund their public infrastructure with tax-free bonds. CI…

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