Whistleblowers

It came to my attention in an interview with Professor James Svara, for a paper I am writing for the journal Public Integrity, that in March 2013, the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) made substantial — sometimes beneficial, sometimes harmful, sometimes baffling — changes to its Code of Ethics (the revised code is attached; see below). This post will look at the changes that involve conflicts of interest.

Personal Interests

Yesterday, Oregon's Statesman Journal reported an interesting case that involves a number of important government ethics issues.

The state's Department of Corrections (DOC) deputy director allegedly used his position to influence an Oregon Corrections Enterprises (OCE) administrator into hiring his son and later giving him a higher salary and increased moving expenses.

An op-ed piece in the New York Times Sunday Review today looks at whistleblowing from the perspective of whether people lean toward fairness or loyalty (those who lean to fairness are more likely to blow the whistle on misconduct). This is, of course, a simplistic approach, but valuable nevertheless. What is especially valuable is the authors' recommendation of reframing whistleblowing. They want to reframe it "as an act of 'larger loyalty' to the greater good.

According to an article in the Orlando Sentinel last week, the Florida Commission on Ethics found probable cause that the Osceola County Clerk of the Court "[used] his position to intimidate [his office's] employees in order to enhance his personal and political power." This raises the issue of whether intimidation can be considered an ethics violation.

This is the second of two posts looking at Kathryn Schulz's excellent book, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (2010), as it applies to local government ethics. This post focuses on how to deal responsibly with one's mistakes, and to the extent possible prevent them.

Dealing Responsibly with Mistakes

It's hard for ethics codes to deal with every kind of relationship where nepotism might be a problem. In a matter involving the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), the relationship involves oversight.

In The Kingdom of Individuals (Cornell University Press, 1993), F. G. Bailey's principal concern is what he calls svejks (pronounced "shvikes"), that is, individuals in organizations who put their personal, but not usually financial interests ahead of the organization, and yet act as if they are loyal to the organization, using its proclaimed values to defend their actions.

Recently, Google has taken what appears to be a distinctly less transparent and open approach to their news distribution search engine. Matthew Lee maintains a small blog/website called http://www.innercitypress.com/ and has a reputation for hounding the UN - specifically the UNDP about what he considers corruption. Recently though, google announced a partnership with the UNDP and here is what happened next: (it seems that) "...