Enforcement & Complaints

Local government officials often defend halfway ethics reforms by saying that they're just the beginning, and that something is better than nothing. But halfway reforms are often effectively little more than nothing, especially in the area of enforcement. "Window dressing" is one term for such reforms. "Paper tiger" is another.

Here's an ethics story from Orlando with a good ending. It emphasizes what I wrote recently, that government ethics involves dealing responsibly with conflict situations.

It had to happen soon:  a legislative immunity defense has been used in a local government ethics matter, albeit in a city where violations are criminally prosecuted. I happened upon it in my research on my last blog entry, about the Baltimore mayor's defenses of her taking gifts from a city developer when she was president of the city council.

Anonymous complaints are both important and problematic. Without anonymous tips and hotlines, our justice system would not work nearly as well as it does. With ethics programs, officials involved in unethical conduct often have great power in the community, and the people who know what they are doing are often the very people most vulnerable to their retribution.

And yet there is an air of cowardice around anonymous complaints, possibly even moreso now that people make anonymous attacks on public figures all over the Internet.

It's amazing how quickly a legislature can move when a bill is so embarrassing, the state's major newspaper calls it "Great for unethical public officials. Lousy for taxpayers." How quickly? Same day service.

Two months ago, I wrote a blog entry about the en masse resignation of the Jackson County (MO) ethics commission, and said that this was a sign that things were seriously wrong in that county. Little did I know.

Former New York State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno has been indicted by a federal grand jury, but his biggest crime was not taking millions of dollars in so-called consulting fees. His biggest crime was standing in the way of any meaningful ethics reform in New York State.

This week, another state ethics commission is facing a defense of legislative immunity. The state is Massachusetts, and the legislator happens to be the speaker of the house, Sal DiMasi.

Back in June, I did a blog entry on the implications for local governments of a Louisiana decision that applied the Speech and Debate Clause to ethics investigations and decisions, effectively preventing state ethics commissions from investigating or enforcing ethics laws against state legislators, even if they voted for the ethics provision involved.

Most local government ethics codes do not explicitly deal with settlement agreements, but most state ethics codes do. I left settlement agreements out of my first draft of the City Ethics Model Code, but I have just added a provision, Section 213(5). The language is based on that of several state ethics codes and rules, especially those of Ohio and Georgia.

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