Local Government Practice

An article in the Bismarck (ND) Tribune this weekend raised the issue of when a board or commission member may withdraw from a matter in which he feels he has a conflict, but where there is not a direct, pecuniary interest.

It is worth noting that the respondent member of the Stamford board of finance in the matter covered in the preceding blog post raised both a legislative immunity and a First Amendment free speech defense in his federal court complaint unsuccessfully seeking an injunction against his ethics proceeding.

I've written before about some of the problems relating to the Hatch Act's prohibition of local government employees running for office if their agency gets any funding from the federal government (1 2). Jason C.

Oxytocin is a hormone released by the hypothalamus portion of the brain which, among other things, makes people trust each other more. In other words, one could argue that local government ethics seeks to increase the release of oxytocin in the brains of people when they think about their local government.

It not only takes a number of officials to allow unethical conduct to occur, it also takes a number of officials to undermine the effect of a good ethics program. An ugly example occurred recently in North Providence, Rhode Island, a city where three former council members are awaiting trial for charges of extortion and bribery.

Bullheadedness is unprofessional, at least in most professions. By "bullheadedness," I mean doing what you want no matter whether a professional tells you not to do it or whether your boss tells you not to do it, even if they tell you why and they are clearly right.

Things have changed. It used to be that the first thing you did when you found out the local ethics commission was investigating you was hire a lawyer (which is itself a change from the days when you found out you were being investigated by the D.A. and handed him a bribe).

I recently read a book by Stanley Cavell called Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life (2004). Despite its title, it is not about cities; in fact, much of the book uses movies to discuss this Harvard professor's ethical philosophy. What is relevant about this book to government ethics is Cavell's idea of "moral perfectionism," which isn't about being perfect, but about constantly seeking improvement in how one thinks and acts.

Yet another court decision discussed at the COGEL conference placed First Amendment free speech rights far above the obligations of a government official, employing a strict scrutiny approach where a simple due process (for statutory vagueness) approach would have been sufficient.

Many people take a character approach to government ethics. That is, they see government ethics as a matter of integrity, and ethics training as a matter of improving an individual's character.

But the aspect of character most important to ethics is not goodness, honesty, or integrity. It is empathy, as defined by President Obama and discussed in a 2009 blog post of mine entitled "Moral Imagination."