On December 6, according to an article on the Chicago Talks website [1], Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel promised that he would make many ethics reforms to “change the culture” of corruption and cronyism at City Hall.

Emanuel said he would require city employees to wait two years after leaving their city jobs before lobbying their former colleagues. He said he would extend the inspector general's oversight to include the city’s park district and public buildings, and that the IG's office would get a bigger budget.

Emanuel said he would make the human resources department more professional and transparent. And he would strengthen the city’s board of ethics.

He said he would require that everyone who participates in the zoning process — including aldermen — would be required to disclose their own and their family members’ conflicts of interest.

“I will sign an executive order on Day One to implement my ethics reforms,” Emanuel said.

Day One was this week, and on Monday Emanuel signed six executive orders [2] dealing with ethics. According to a summary on Emanuel's Chicago 2011 website [3], three of them are new and three of them are reissues of his predecessor's executive orders. Here are the descriptions of the three new orders:

The first Executive Order prohibits new appointees from lobbying City government for two years after leaving the Administration. Lower level employees are barred from lobbying the departments or agencies in which they work and appointees to boards and commissions are barred from lobbying the board or commission on which they sit.

The second Executive Order protects City employees against pressure to give gifts or make political contributions to their superiors, including department heads and the Mayor.

The third Executive Order prohibits City lobbyists from making political contributions to the Mayor.

The reissued executive orders include a ban on political contributions to the Mayor from the owners of companies that do business with the City, an order requiring City employees to comply with the hiring oversight rules adopted in connection with the Shakman litigation, and an order reaffirming that it is the duty of every City employee to report wrongdoing to the Inspector General.

The big deal in these executive orders is a prohibition on city employees making campaign contributions to the mayor. It is common in many local governments for employees to feel obliged to make such contributions. I have never seen this prohibition, but it is certainly something that would take the pressure off local government employees, who should not be pressured to make any gifts or contributions, not only to their superiors, but also to their superiors' campaigns and favorite charities, or to the campaigns of candidates their superiors support.

This is an excellent use of an executive order, because it is appropriate for the mayor himself to make this prohibition. Were it made by the city council, especially if the ordinance did not apply the prohibition to contributions to council members, it would look bad rather than laudable.

But otherwise, executive orders on ethics matters are generally more show than substance. They are piecemeal. They do not set up consistent, effective, and independent training, advice, disclosure, or enforcement. And they usually leave out the most important reforms. In this instance, for example, they leave out what Emanuel said about requiring everyone involved in the zoning process to disclose their conflicts of interest.

Better than executive orders to show one's leadership is devotion to creating a complete, independent ethics program that works, and leading by example in such areas as hiring, open discussion of ethics matters, and transparency across the board.

Here are other blog posts showing problems involving ethics-related executive orders:
Executive Orders Are Good, Enforcement Is Better [4]
Some Problems with Mayoral Executive Orders in Philadelphia [5]
Fort Wayne Deserves a Far Better Ethics Program [6]
How Should Ethics Reform Be Done? [7]

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics

203-230-2548