Resources & Learning

I just watched the film Hands Over the City, and I believe it should hop up to the top of City Ethics’ list of Top Ten Ethics Films. Hands Over the City is a dramatic film that is about municipal government ethics, and nothing else.

Not one of the recent books in my ethics library cites Jane Jacobs’ 1993 work, Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics. The citations I found on-line do not include any about government ethics. This is a big loss for the government ethics community, because Jacobs, who died a couple of years ago, gave us a lot to think about. And we’ve been missing out. Jacobs’ book (in the form of a dialogue among a group of people) sets out two separate and opposed, yet symbiotic moral syndromes.

Gaining and retaining the public's trust in government is the principal reason given for passing ethics codes. But there is little talk beyond this about the concept of trust. I just read a book called The Moral Foundations of Trust by Eric M. Uslaner (Cambridge University Press, 2002). This book's focus is on what the author calls 'generalized trust,' that is, the optimistic belief that people are basically trustworthy. However, the author also talks a lot about the other sort of trust, 'strategic trust,' which is a form of trust that requires reciprocity.

At first glance, these two logical fallacies don't seem to have much to do with each other. When you beg the question, you assume something has been established or proved, according to my trusty dictionary. The way a logician would define the begging the question fallacy is that the premises include the claim or assumption that the conclusion is true, without providing any evidence or actual argument. The result is a circular argument, taking for granted what it's supposed to prove.

One great advantage of handling local government ethics matters at the state level is that decisions and advisory opinions can be easily and widely disseminated to all local governments in the state. This sort of publicity is good for several reasons. One, it provides precedents and guidance to local government officials. Two, it provides deterrence by showing the consequences of a wide variety of ethical violations.

When an official makes an Ad Hominem attack, everyone realizes there is an attack. And when an official makes an Ad Populum defense, everyone realizes that there is a defense. But when an official sets up a Straw Man, the situation isn't so clear. It's not an attack or a defense, but a response to an argument.

There is so much valuable material in Terry L. Cooper's book The Responsible Administrator: An Approach to Ethics for the Administrative Role (1998) that it's difficult to sum up in a review. So instead I will look at some of its most important points in a few separate blog entries. Responsibility is the key to municipal ethics as well as administration.

Rushworth Kidder's 2005 book Moral Courage is something all municipal officials should read. It's not only a good introduction to ethics, but it focuses on the quality that is most important to create and maintain an ethical environment in any organization, and especially in governments. But since you probably won't read the book, here are a few of Kidder's points that will most profit municipal officials. Moral courage's principal purpose is to take values from the theoretical to the practical, from thought to action.

We have been batting this around for a while, and have come up with the following list:

The Top Ten BEST ETHICS Movies of all time

1. Man for All Seasons

Paul Scofield brilliantly plays Thomas More who stands up for his principals against the ultimate difficult boss, King Henry VIIII. In the end, he dies for his faith and his principals, but he gets to become the patron saint of lawyers.

2. Gandhi

Gentle courage in the face of extreme resistance to doing the right thing.

One of the most serious obstacles to ethics training is cynicism. For example, a councilman in South Lake Tahoe, California said, according to a recent article in the Tahoe Daily Tribune, that the California requirement of ethics training for all municipal officials is an indication of a breakdown in trust in local government and "It's not going to change behavior.