Ethics Commissions/Administration

Ethics commissions appointed by local legislative bodies, mayors, or county executives are often referred to as "independent commissions." I don't believe that these commissions should be considered "independent," because those who select the EC members are under the members' jurisdiction and, in fact, are the people most likely to come before them. These EC members are perceived as biased toward their appointing party, which is far from "independence."

The Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL), an association of American and Canadian practitioners in the areas of conflicts of interest, campaign finance, transparency, elections, and lobbying, is looking into the possibility of offering certification programs in these areas. I assume the courses would be both about the topics and about administering programs in these areas.

Reading in The Economist a distinction made by Paul Kingsnorth, a leader of the uncivilization movement, a response to climate change, made me wonder whether it is also important with respect to government ethics. His distinction is between a "problem" and a "predicament." A "problem" is something that can be solved. A "predicament" is something that must be endured, for which there is no real solution. When faced with a predicament, the appropriate response is not to try to solve it, but rather to accept it and feel grief for what is lost because of it.

Can local legislators be trusted with the discretion to reimburse their colleagues for legal fees in ethics proceedings? This question is raised by a decision of the Wellington, FL council a few weeks ago.

Many local legislative bodies have ethics committees, even where there is an ethics commission. The reason for these self-regulatory committees is that these bodies have their own codes of conduct that go beyond conflicts of interest, and which are enforced, discussed, and amended separate from the city or county's ethics program. Some local ethics programs consist of nothing more than a council ethics committee and code of conduct, but that situation is not the topic of this blog post.

Although citizen participation is not part of government ethics, it's important to keep reminding ourselves that it is central to government ethics, because it is a principal goal of government ethics programs.

Updates: February 5 and April 16, 2014 (see below)

Here is a must-read Star-Ledger op-ed piece by Paula Franzese, a professor at Seton Hall Law School and former chair of the New Jersey Ethics Commission (2006 to 2010). She provides a short history of the selection process for the executive director of the state EC, and then looks more closely at the context of the latest selection for that position.

Crowdfunding is a 21st-century way of funding projects that are not being funded by the government, the stock market, venture capitalists, or even angel investors. But it's really not as 21st-century as people think. For example, the Statue of Liberty's pedestal was crowdfunded back in 1885 (without the Internet, the crowdfunding was led by Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher of New York World newspaper).