City Related

One nearly untouchable aspect of government ethics is the role of parties.

This is less a problem in municipalities than at other levels of government, because most municipalities in the U.S. are nonpartisan, although parties still play a role. But many municipalities and, in some states, particularly in the Northeast, all municipalities are still partisan. And most counties are partisan, as well.

In an upcoming book,<a href="http://www.e-elgar.co.uk/Bookentry_DESCRIPTION.lasso?id=13032"&gt; <i>The Rule of Law and Development,</i></a> Michael Trebilcock and Ron Daniels divide developing countries into three groups (according to an article in last week’s <i>Economist</I>):

An essential problem in many local governments is a lack of transparency. When people do not know what is happening, and access to information is very difficult, democracy is undermined in several ways. Reformers have a difficult time showing what is actually happening or preparing for public meetings and public hearings. Newspapers are dependent on what officials say. Ordinary citizens become indifferent or completely turned off when all news is of the he said-she said variety.

The following appeared in <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-kuy28feb28,0,3816020.story">a recent op-ed column</a> in the Los Angeles <i>Times</i> by a young doctor, SreyRam Kuy. The issue was a health insurer asking doctors to report patient conditions that might be used to cancel health insurance.

Dan Ariely, an economist at M.I.T., made up a test that is easy to cheat on, in order to see how social situations might affect students’ choices whether to actually cheat or not. As described in his new book, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Hidden-Forces-Decisions/dp… Irrational</a></I>, he found that students who had been asked to recall the Ten Commandments did not cheat at all.

There is an assumption held by people involved in government ethics that putting one’s personal interests ahead of the public interest is bad, that a healthy democracy depends on government officials working for the public interest rather than for themselves.

But not everyone holds this view. In fact, the prevalence of the opposite view provides a great deal of support to unethical conduct, especially at the local government level.

How harmful can it be for a potential contractor to give money to the favored charities of someone who oversees a county’s finances? And how harmful can it be for a county official to work with people he trusts, rather than competitively bidding out the county’s business?

The answer to both questions, given by the disaster that's hit Jefferson County, Alabama, home to the city of Birmingham, is a lot.

Ethics problems in Louisiana have shown up in this blog several times, so it’s heartening to be able to report that Louisiana is now putting into law a series of ethics improvements, some of which apply to local governments. For example, <a href="http://www.gov.louisiana.gov/index.cfm?md=newsroom&tmp=detail&articleID… week Gov.

“Ethics” is an unfortunate name for what appears in government ethics codes. When people think about ethics, they think about right and wrong, about moral obligations, about being honest and upright, about the Golden Rule.

This isn’t what government ethics deals with. Government ethics deals with a limited area of conduct: conflicts of interest. And most people don’t realize this, or understand conflicts of interest.

The ethics rules of the Minnesota State Senate limit conflicts of interest to instances where a bill would provide a financial benefit to a senator or his or her employer that is not shared by other similarly situated individuals or firms. This is a common standard.