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The Problems with a New Report on Chicago's Level of Corruption
Thursday, February 16th, 2012
Robert Wechsler
What is corruption? I try not to use this word with respect to
government ethics, because it is commonly thought of as having to do
with criminal misconduct such as bribery, kickbacks, fraud, and
embezzlement. There is, however, the term "institutional corruption," which
deals with legal misconduct that undermines public trust. And right
there in the middle is government ethics, which involves illegal but
not criminal misconduct. All very confusing.
Yesterday, a report entitled "Chicago and Illinois, Leading the Pack in Corruption" was published by the University of Illinois at Chicago political science department, timed to coincide with the Chicago Task Force on Ethics Reform's first public hearing. While calling for ethics reforms, the report uses one statistic only to name Chicago the most corrupt city in the country: federal public corruption convictions during the period 1976-2010.
Are these professors arguing that ethics reforms will substantially decrease criminal convictions? I think that the creation of an independent, comprehensive ethics program could do this by substantially improving the city government's ethics environment, but the professors are not calling for this. They are calling for six ethics reforms, some of them substantive, some of them procedural, but certainly not amounting to a qualitatively different ethics program. Nor have they, or anyone else, done the research that might create a factual basis for their link between ethics reform and criminal convictions.
What stood out for me from the statistics was the decrease in Chicago-area convictions from the nineties to the oughts, from 610 to 367. This huge forty-percent decrease is not mentioned in the report. Does this reflect ethics reforms? Or were there other causes?
The fact is that criminal convictions are a meaningless statistic when it comes to government ethics, or even government corruption. Convictions are mostly dependent on sting operations, and instituting them can be a very political decision. The statistics could just as easily be interpreted as showing that Chicago's feds are the best in the country at getting their men. Or that the Justice Department puts more resources into Chicago because they feel it is the most corrupt city in the country; this can be a self-fulfilling view.
In fact, ethics violation statistics are no more meaningful. There are so many reasons why a proceeding does not end in a finding of a violation. And there are so many reasons that complaints are not filed and that those that are filed are dismissed. Some of the cities and counties with the worst ethics environments have very few findings of an ethics violation, or none at all, because their ethics programs, if they exist at all, are not trusted or are not trustworthy.
There are no simple correlations in government ethics. It is, I think, dishonest to present statistics that have no clear connection to the reforms one is seeking, implying that there is a connection. It might make an impact to have headlines that say Chicago is the most corrupt city in the country. The corruption displayed in the statistics, even if it still existed, would require reforms that go far beyond what the professors have recommended. Ethics laws can only do so much. Aldermen need to give up some of their power in their districts, more oversight is needed as well as better leadership and more funding for the ethics board and inspector general offices (not to mention consolidation). The ethics environment has to be changed to one where conflicts are openly discussed, where employees feel duty bound to report violations (rather than accepting of them, or afraid to say a word), where the public comes to expect more of those who run their community, and where government leaders are truly committed to doing what it takes.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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Yesterday, a report entitled "Chicago and Illinois, Leading the Pack in Corruption" was published by the University of Illinois at Chicago political science department, timed to coincide with the Chicago Task Force on Ethics Reform's first public hearing. While calling for ethics reforms, the report uses one statistic only to name Chicago the most corrupt city in the country: federal public corruption convictions during the period 1976-2010.
Are these professors arguing that ethics reforms will substantially decrease criminal convictions? I think that the creation of an independent, comprehensive ethics program could do this by substantially improving the city government's ethics environment, but the professors are not calling for this. They are calling for six ethics reforms, some of them substantive, some of them procedural, but certainly not amounting to a qualitatively different ethics program. Nor have they, or anyone else, done the research that might create a factual basis for their link between ethics reform and criminal convictions.
What stood out for me from the statistics was the decrease in Chicago-area convictions from the nineties to the oughts, from 610 to 367. This huge forty-percent decrease is not mentioned in the report. Does this reflect ethics reforms? Or were there other causes?
The fact is that criminal convictions are a meaningless statistic when it comes to government ethics, or even government corruption. Convictions are mostly dependent on sting operations, and instituting them can be a very political decision. The statistics could just as easily be interpreted as showing that Chicago's feds are the best in the country at getting their men. Or that the Justice Department puts more resources into Chicago because they feel it is the most corrupt city in the country; this can be a self-fulfilling view.
In fact, ethics violation statistics are no more meaningful. There are so many reasons why a proceeding does not end in a finding of a violation. And there are so many reasons that complaints are not filed and that those that are filed are dismissed. Some of the cities and counties with the worst ethics environments have very few findings of an ethics violation, or none at all, because their ethics programs, if they exist at all, are not trusted or are not trustworthy.
There are no simple correlations in government ethics. It is, I think, dishonest to present statistics that have no clear connection to the reforms one is seeking, implying that there is a connection. It might make an impact to have headlines that say Chicago is the most corrupt city in the country. The corruption displayed in the statistics, even if it still existed, would require reforms that go far beyond what the professors have recommended. Ethics laws can only do so much. Aldermen need to give up some of their power in their districts, more oversight is needed as well as better leadership and more funding for the ethics board and inspector general offices (not to mention consolidation). The ethics environment has to be changed to one where conflicts are openly discussed, where employees feel duty bound to report violations (rather than accepting of them, or afraid to say a word), where the public comes to expect more of those who run their community, and where government leaders are truly committed to doing what it takes.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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