City Related

Conflicts of Interest February 23, 2008

Can a Postage Stamp Be a Bribe?

When we talk about gifts to politicians, we often talk about gifts of nominal value being okay. Buy a politician a coffee, what’s wrong with that? But what happens when it’s the other way around? What if the politician buys a coffee for a citizen? One citizen, no problem. A few more at a fundraiser, that’s okay (and it's not buying votes, but rather buying more money). But what about thousands of citizens?
Read more →
Ethics Codes & Reform February 7, 2008

Ethics Code Waiver Provisions and Unforeseen Consequences

An Alaskan state representative needs a new kidney. The new state ethics law does not allow gifts over $250. It has a compassionate gift exemption, but it only allows compassionate gifts with a fair market value less than $250. This is one of many unforeseen consequences that comes from ethics codes (or any legislation, for that matter). So the state legislature is rushing through a bill to change the exemption to a reporting requirement.
Read more →
Ethics Codes & Reform February 5, 2008

Muncie, Indiana, and the Applicability of the ASPA Code of Ethics for a City Council:

According to an article in the Muncie (IN) Star Press, the Muncie City Council voted 5-4 not to adopt the American Society for Public Administration’s ethics code, something that hundreds of citizens at the meeting favored. Apparently, the one non-Council member who spoke out against voting for the code was the City Attorney, who “worried the proposed code of ethics was geared more toward administrators than a legislative body, and that it would create separation-of-power issues.”
Read more →
Conflicts of Interest February 4, 2008

A Controversial Indianapolis Board Appointment: Perception and the Dilemma Between Competence and Conflicts of Interest

The new mayor of Indianapolis, Greg Ballard, who ran as a candidate who would bring ethics to city government, is already embroiled in a controversial ethics issue. He has appointed Robert T. Grand as chair of the Capital Improvement Board (CIB), which manages the city’s convention center and sports stadiums, including that of the Indiana Pacers, a basketball team owned by the Simon family. There is a good chance that the Pacers' lease will be renegotiated next year. Grand, an attorney, represents the Simon family’s principal business, the Simon Property Group.
Read more →
February 1, 2008

New National Government Ethics Survey Shows That Too Few Local Governments Have Strong Ethical Cultures

The Ethics Resource Center’s first National Government Ethics Survey has just come out, and is available free at the ERC’s website, although it requires registration. It is the result of a random 2007 telephone poll of government employees, and is part of a series of polls looking at ethics in different sorts of workplaces. City Ethics' Founder, Carla Miller, was on the Advisory Group for this survey. Here are some of the Survey’s findings relating to local governments.
Read more →
Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play January 31, 2008

Supreme Court Justices and Their Campaign Contributions: Can Justice Be Purchased?

Articles have been written putting into question the study on which the following blog entry was based. The Tulane Law Review and Law School have apologized, but the authors, although admitting to their errors, stand by their conclusions and plan to publish a revised version of their law review article, according to an article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
Read more →
Conflicts of Interest January 29, 2008

Commercial Bail Bond System: Local Corruption and Ends vs. Rules

The most important division in ethics is between ends-based approaches (consequentialist or teleological, best known as "the ends justify the means") and rules-based approaches (deontological). The most important problem for individuals in government is that we are taught rules-based approaches while we’re growing up (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”), but in government most talk is in terms of ends (Will it raise taxes?). Today’s New York Times has a long feature about America’s comm
Read more →
Transparency & Disclosure January 28, 2008

Transparency -- Another Disaster Shows Us How Important It Is

Transparency is often seen as a technical, often annoying part of municipal ethics. All those notices and agendas that have to be filed at the right time in the right place, all those document requests from the news media and opposition parties. Is all this really necessary for good government? Does it lower taxes, provide better services? Or is it just a pain in the neck? Sometimes you need a big disaster – Enron, for example – for people to understand the cost of not acting ethically. Well, we’ve just had another disaster, and once again transparency is at the center of it.
Read more →
Local Government Practice January 10, 2008

Municipal Governments Can Grow Up, Too

Has your city’s government grown up yet, ethically speaking? This isn't as silly a question as it sounds. All of us develop morally, just as we develop physically and intellectually and emotionally. We just don’t see our height grow or get university degrees or get married and have children, ethically speaking. The same is true of municipal governments, according to James S. Bowman in his essay “The Ethical Professional,” which appears in The Ethics Edge, ed. Jonathan P. West and Evan M.
Read more →
Subscribe to City Related