Ethics Codes & Reform

One of the areas where government ethics laws are weakest is the indirect relationship, such as when a gift is given not to an official, but to an official's spouse or child; an official's business relationship is not with a developer, but with the owner of the developer's parent; an official's aide participates on a recused official's behalf; or an official participates in a contract matter when she has a family relationship with the owner of a subcontractor that is not directly involved in the bid.

According to a post in the Crain's Insider blog last week, the New York City council hired as deputy general counsel a lobbyist whose firm recently had been the council speaker's campaign consultant (the speaker is the leader of the NY city council, elected by its members). This raises an interesting conflict issue relating not only to hiring, but also to firms that both provide campaign services and lobby local government officials.

Ethics reform can take the oddest forms, especially when those doing it put on blinders and consider nothing but the situation before them, thereby failing to consider best practices or, in fact, the practices of any other jurisdiction.

I read something very exciting today in the April 1 newsletter of the Ethics Section of the American Society for Public Administration. In a short essay entitled "Living in Glass Houses: Ethics Commissions in the United States," Stuart C. Gilman, who has had an illustrious career both in academia and on the front lines of ethics and anti-corruption efforts, wrote the following:

I believe it is time for the ethics section to become more activist by encouraging targeted research or an ASPA commission to look into what makes ... ethics commissions effective. ...

"The deep problem with the system was a kind of moral inertia. So long as it served the narrow self-interests of everyone inside it, no one on the inside would ever seek to change it, no matter how corrupt or sinister it became — though even to use words like 'corrupt' or 'sinister' made serious people uncomfortable, so Katsuyama avoided them. Maybe his biggest concern, when he spoke to city residents, was that he be seen as just another nut with a conspiracy theory."

This week, Seattle's expanded Whistleblower Protection Code became effective (attached; see below). As what appears to be the most extensive local whistleblower code, it deserves a look from any local government seeking to draft or improve whistleblower provisions.

The major changes to the code, according to the ethics commission's (SEEC) website, are:

Employees who report wrongdoing to their supervisor or other person in their chain of command will now be protected from retaliation.

The SEEC will now investigate allegations of retaliation.

Mike DeBonis's article in the Washington Post last week describes an operatic ethics matter, with several twists and complications, with dramatic cries of innocence mixed with scathing accusations of guilt.

This is the last of four blog posts on Florida Senate Bill 606 (attached; see below), one of the worst ethics reform bills I have ever read.

This is the second of four blog posts on Florida Senate Bill 606 (attached; see below), one of the worst ethics reform bills I have ever read (click here to read the first post, which focused on a provision that provides an additional penalty on complainants in order to reduce the number of ethics complaints).

Gift Reporting vs. Gift Banning

One of the biggest problems in government ethics is determining whether ethics reforms "work." A well written article in the Advocate looked at Louisiana's ethics enforcement since the reforms instituted by Gov. Jindal became applicable in 2009. Louisiana's ethics program has jurisdiction over local officials.