City Related

Ethics program independence is, as far as I'm concerned, the single most important issue in ethics reform. Nothing gains the public's trust as much as an ethics program that is independent from the officials over whom it has jurisdiction.

My second blog post on the Chicago ethics task force's second report identified what I considered to be its worst ideas. Mayor Emanuel's recommendations accepted its bad ideas just as much as its good ideas.

The second round of Chicago ethics reform recommendations, based on the ethics task force's second report (attached; see below), have been proposed by Chicago's mayor Rahm Emanuel (click here to read a summary of the mayor's recommendations).

After Common Cause questioned the fitness of Baltimore's government ethics director for his job, an opinion piece called for him to be fired, and a Sun article appeared under the he

A situation that arose recently in Atlanta shows how important it is to require applicant disclosure of relationships with local government officials, and to hold applicants accountable. According to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Atlanta's ethics office dismissed allegations that a council member had sponsored and voted on a no-bid contract when he had some sort of employment relationship with the contractor.

A conflict situation in Albuquerque presents an excellent opportunity to consider just what it is about conflicts that makes them problematic. According to an article in the Albuquerque Journal on Saturday, the chair of Albuquerque's Police Oversight Commission also directs the auxiliary of the local branch of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), and her husband is president of the state FOP.

With the frequent confusion of person and office, sometimes it's not that easy to tell the difference between a gift to a local government agency and a gift to its director. This confusion can open an agency director to accusations of ethical misconduct.

Several years ago, one of my town's department heads was arrested for embezzlement of funds. When someone had reported to the first selectman (effectively the mayor) that this was going on, the first selectman went to the department head and asked him if the report was true. The department head denied it. And the matter was dropped.

Did the first selectman have an obligation to the public not to accept his department head's word, but instead dig deeper to find out the truth, or have this done by the appropriate authorities?

It is important to bring contractors into an ethics program, requiring them to disclose gifts their employees make to officials, and to deal responsibly with possible conflicts they are aware of. Businesses tend to deal with such things internally. Bringing them into an ethics program requires them to recognize that dealing with conflict situations internally is not enough.

I recently wrote a blog post about a situation where a citizen asked an ethics commission for ethics advice when council members failed to do so and, despite the corporation counsel's suggestion that it provide the advice, the ethics commission refused to provide it.