City Related

Voter ID laws, which are being pushed by the Bush Administration and by Republicans at the state level, have an effect on municipal elections, as well. They are not only a federal and state problem.

I've just finished reading a book called <i>Illicit</I> by Moises Naim, about the trafficking of everything from people and drugs to artworks and counterfeit DVDs .

One of the things Naim focuses on is why governments have so much trouble putting a dent into any of these types of trafficking. The principal reason is the structure of relationships. Government bureaucracies lose out to increasingly flexible networks of individuals.

I also write <a href="http://northhaveninfo.blogspot.com&quot; />a blog relating to my town's government</a>.

Is there an ethical requirement to discuss matters that are not being discussed?

Dan Goleman, the author of <I>Emotional Intelligence</I>, refers to something he calls the Four Attentional Rules. 'In any group, from the family, to organizations, to entire societies, there are these unstated rules that we learn tacitly about the questions that can't be asked.'

<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/335">Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.</a>

Usually an ethics pledge is something required of a town official or something requested by a good government organization. But sometimes an ethics pledge is an election strategy.

This is the case in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where the state legislature's Government Administration and Elections co-chair Christopher Caruso and his Citizens for Real Change slate of candidates took an ethics pledge earlier this month.

My first experience with municipal politics in New Jersey, where I lived for nine years before moving to Connecticut, was accompanying some neighbors to a council meeting, because a couple of them wanted to speak about a change in zoning that affected the street we lived on. A neighbor asked the mayor when they could speak, and was told people would be alerted when it came time to speak. The council debated the issue and then, without a pause, started to vote on it. I rose in protest and had to insist, against people saying it was too late, that my neighbors be heard.

Yesterday in a dramatic speech to the City's Council, Mayor Peyton announced a series of sweeping ethics reforms, foremost of which was his appointment of Carla Miller as the City's Ethics Officer - in his words:

Taiwan has come up with the perfect way to prevent mayors from misusing government funds. Its solution appears to be based on the way parents prevent their children from taking money out of their wallets: give them an allowance to spend any way they please.

Today's guilty plea by New Orleans' City Council vice president, Oliver Thomas, is on its face about the acceptance of a bribe. But behind that bribe is a serious conflict of interest.

Not only was Thomas the council vice president and longest-serving council member, but he was also a member of the board of the French Market Corporation, a city agency that owns and manages buildings in the French Quarter. The bribe was from someone who wanted to keep his parking lot contract with the French Market Corporation.

It's difficult to show clearly that ethical government correlates with ethical conduct. However, last year Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel came up with <a href="http://www.nber.org/digest/feb07/w12312.html">a study</a> that does this: They studied parking tickets given to United Nations diplomats in Manhattan.