Resources & Learning

Self-justification is an important element in ethical misconduct, cover-ups, and officials' public denials and explanations of conduct. It aids and abets our blind spots. It is a sign of weakness, anxiety, and fear more than of poor character Self-justification is something each of us engages in. S…

I thought that I had covered all the blind spots that wreak such havoc on local government ethics (see the section in my book Local Government Ethics Programs). But Dennis J. Moberg's essay, "Ethics Blind Spots in Organizations: How Systematic Errors in Person Perception Undermine Moral Agency" (Or…

"'Public Service Must Begin at Home': The Lawyer as Civics Teacher in Everyday Practice" by Bruce A. Green and Russell G. Pearce (William & Mary Law Review, Vol. 50, p. 1207, 2009) provides an excellent basis for something that I consider extremely important to government ethics, but with which man…

I just finished reading the classic political science book Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City by Robert A. Dahl (Yale University Press, 1961). It might have been the second time around, because I did take an Urban Politics course forty years ago. The book happens to focus on New H…

In preparation for the chapter on lobbying that I'm working on, I just finished reading a 2002 book entitled The Ethics of Lobbying from the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University (Georgetown UP). It's an excellent introduction to a number of issues involved in lobbying of the federa…

In a blog post last week, I listed the many reasons why city and county attorneys should not be providing ethics advice. One of those reasons was that "legal advice and ethics advice require different skill sets." But I limited this part of my analysis to saying that "A legal adviser sticks to the …

I'm reading an excellent novel right now:  Quiet Chaos by Sandro Veronesi, translated from the Italian by Michael F. Moore (Ecco, 2004, 2011). The narrator has just learned that his boss stole money from the company they worked for. He was very close to his boss, and saw nothing in him that would l…

The Privatization of Economic Development A fascinating report has just been published by Good Jobs First, entitled "Creating Scandals Instead of Jobs: The Failures of Privatized State Economic Development Agencies." Good Jobs First describes itself as "a national policy resource center for grassro…

I recently read the latest, third edition of The Ethics Challenge in Public Service: A Problem-Solving Guide by Carol W. Lewis and Stuart C. Gilman (Jossey-Bass, 2012). This is the second most popular text used in Public Sector Ethics courses, mostly in Public Administration programs. Most of the b…

The second edition of the resource book Local Government Ethics Programs will be put up on the City Ethics website in the next few days. It is updated, improved, and expanded. One of the new features is an extensive list of Best Practices. Here is the list: Basic Matters 1. Speaking not in terms of…