Ethics Codes & Reform

Whistleblower provisions are extremely important to government ethics, but poorly worded ethics provisions can undermine even the best whistleblower provisions, especially in unscrupulous hands. One such ethics provision is the confidential information provision.

A nurse at a Winker County, TX hospital was charged with felony misuse of confidential information for reporting improper medical treatment by a doctor, according to an article in today's New York Times.

There is an intriguing blog post on Rick Hasen's Election Law Blog this morning, entitled, Is Reading a Legal Blog in One's Field Now Part of the Due Diligence of Lawyers?

There are many ways to get ethics reform going (the Lone Ranger being out of fashion outside of New York State), but the choices are different in different states, and it's hard to know which one is best or most practicable for a particular community.

There's an interesting issue at the heart of a judicial inquiry into possible misconduct by the mayor of Mississauga, Ontario. The council sought the inquiry to “investigate any supposed breach of trust or other misconduct of a Member of Council, an employee of the municipality or person having a contract with the municipality” and to inquire into “any matter connected with the good government of the municipality or the conduct of any part of its public business." In short, it is an open-ended inquiry into multiple matters relating to two deals in which the mayor was involved.

Note: I completely rewrote this post after Mark Davies set me straight about the state law on which disclosure forms an official must file.

Honesty, although central to ethics, is not central to government ethics. The reason for this is that honesty, or falsity, is so complex, it is almost impossible to define or enforce. And first amendment freedom of speech places so many limitations on government regulation of expression short of libel (the intentional attempt to falsely destroy another's reputation). Life is full of mistakes and misreadings, half-truths and kernels of truth, and these do not constitute falsity. Honesty comes in more shades of gray than a black-and-white movie.

Most local governments leave open meeting and public records matters to the state. But often the slowness and expense of the state enforcement process, as well as weaknesses in state law (e.g., too short a period for noticing agendas, vague guidelines on filling FOI requests), can mean that open meeting and public records laws are insufficiently effective or are ignored.

New York State's new comptroller (see an earlier blog post about the prior comptroller's ethical problems) has recently produced a report based on an audit of 31 New York local governments and a survey of many more (see the press release for an overview).