An article in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer [1] says that the state's inspector general has found that, despite past problems, the South Jersey Transportation Authority [2] has gotten its act together, ethically speaking. But go to the authority's News Clip page [3], and all it says is "Nothing to Report." After all, a 103-page inspector general's report [4] detailing the authority's ethical misconduct isn't worth reporting, is it? It's a professionally designed website, but there appears to be nothing about ethics or compliance, and no search line to find it.

Also, the ethics officer is still in office, despite her own ethical problems ("significant failure ... to properly discharge her duties" according to the IG's report, p. 71). For example, she did not enforce the disclosure requirements regarding outside activities. According to the report, "the former Executive Director and other management staff failed to disclose their own outside activities, some of which were elected political office positions in municipal and county governments." (p. 71-72)

How did this happen? Because, as the ethics officer told the IG, "she allowed compliance with the Conflicts of Interest Law and State ethics rules and requirements to be based on the honor system." (p. 74) The IG report shows what happens when ethics officers depend on an honor system. No better argument need be made for independent enforcement of ethics codes than what happens when officials are allowed to follow an honor system.

One nice thing about the authority's ethics program is that there is an alternate ethics officer who can deal with the ethics officer's own compliance with ethics laws. This allowed the ethics officer to ask for permission to act as treasurer in the re-election campaign of a council member. And the request was approved even though participation in a campaign is, according to the IG report, prohibited by the state conflicts of interest law. Nice.

And the ethics officer's spouse, also an employee of the authority (a conflict there?), did not disclose his outside activity for some time, and when he did, the ethics officer approved it (clearly a conflict).

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics

203-230-2548