Local Government Practice

According to an article in yesterday's New York Times, it is coming out that more teachers and school administrators have been involved in cheating on the test scores that may not only give them bonuses, but may determine whether their schools continue to exist. One can argue ad infinitum about the pressures, temptations, and morals involved. But one thing is certain: the problems were not created by the teachers and administrators.

Is the partisanship of local government elections a government ethics issue? I think it is, partly.

The story that sparked my thoughts about this was one from today's New York Times about Mayor Bloomberg's second attempt to turn New York City elections from partisan to nonpartisan.

Failure to disclose or to recuse oneself, even when it is not legally required, can lead to some big headaches, as can be seen in Portland, OR, where a city commissioner voted on a grant to a non-profit organization where his girlfriend works. Also interesting in this case is the commissioner's use of personal ethics rather than professional, government ethics in making his judgment calls.

Many government lawyers feel that the rules of professional conduct are sufficient to keep them ethical. Because of this, they sometimes seek to be excluded from an ethics commission's jurisdiction (see a recent blog post) and more often argue that the attorney discipline system takes precedence.

It would be easy to say that politics is a team sport, like football, while ethics is an individual sport, like tennis. But this simply isn't true. Both ethical behavior and unethical behavior can be done as a team.

Four years ago, in one of my first and most important blog posts, on ethical failures in leadership, I wrote that politics is a team sport, continuing as follows:

One of the biggest differences between unethical conduct and criminal conduct by government officials is the matter of proving intent. For example, a bribe is nothing more than a gift to a government official where it has been proven that the official intentionally took a gift in return for certain conduct. In government ethics, taking a gift beyond a certain value is all that needs to be proven to show misconduct. The official's conduct, beyond accepting the gift, is irrelevant, as is the official's intent.

Georgia seems intent on providing an entire course on the ethical obligations of government attorneys. This time it's the obligations of the state's top government attorney, the attorney general. There's also an issue concerning special government attorneys.

The governor wants to file a suit to challenge the constitutionality of the federal health care reform bill. The elected attorney general says that it's unlikely to be successful, and would be a waste of state resources.

Unions are paid for by union members, business associations are paid for by businesses, but local government associations are paid for by taxpayers, not by local governments. And yet while unions represent members, and business associations represent businesses, local government associations represent local governments. This setup is asking for trouble.

Misuse of government resources, nepotism, transparency, and the obligations of government attorneys are all issues in litigation over a village's secret use of a contaminated well for 20% of the village's water supply, according to an article in Sunday's Chicago Tribune.

Here a few questions that arise from this matter:

Almost three years ago, I wrote a blog post about the scandal that rocked my town, North Haven, CT. Since then, one of the two arrested department heads, the finance director, was given accelerated rehabilitation (lenient probation) because he turned state's evidence. The other department head, and his wife, who was his assistant, spent years delaying trial, and then also asked for accelerated rehabilitation. They had been charged with embezzlement, larceny, forgery, and conspiracy.