Ways to Achieve Ethics Reform

There are many ways to get ethics reform going (the Lone Ranger being out of fashion outside of New York State), but the choices are different in different states, and it's hard to know which one is best or most practicable for a particular community. An article in Tuesday's Florida Times-Union shows the choices facing Jacksonville's ethics commission and ethics officer (the ethics officer, Carla Miller, is president of City Ethics).

The EC wants a new, improved ethics program to be placed in the city charter, so that it won't be easy for a future council to change. It's good to have the basic structure of an ethics program in the charter, but the details should, I think, be in an ordinance, because it's important to make minor changes and improvements as one learns more about how the program works and doesn't work.

One alternative is to convince the council to vote to amend the charter, and to get the local state legislators to approve giving the EC and IG authority over independent local agencies and authorities.

Another alternative is to get local state legislators to sponsor a local bill that would require approval of the state legislature. This would also put the ethics program beyond a future council's reach.

A third alternative arises if the council refuses to amend the charter. Presumably, this would anger the public, and the issue could be placed on the ballot. Surprisingly, it was a council member who recently pushed this alternative to the EC members. This does not bode well for council approval.

But the council has a way to eat its cake and have it, too. It can delay the matter for long enough that it cannot appear on this year's November ballot. And then next year it can pass a weaker ordinance so that there would be little excitement about a charter amendment.

A common situation is for an independent ballot initiative movement to be undermined by a council or, in Florida, by the local state legislators and by the local independent agencies and authorities. The more people there are who feel threatened by an improved ethics program, the more lobbying there is against it, and the harder it is to get it passed, not to mention included in the charter. When there is not a big ethics scandal going on, the result is often a watered-down ethics program that does not apply to independent agencies and, sometimes, does not even apply to the council.

Some other blog posts on approaches to ethics reform:
A Comparison of Two Ethics Initiatives
San Jose's Ethics Reform
Louisville's Ethics Reform
Baltimore's Ethics Reform
Philadelphia's Ethics Reform
Yorba Linda's Ethics Reform
Dallas's Ethics Reform
Ethics Reform in Cuyahoga County (OH)?
Palm Beach County Ethics Reform
Corpus Christi's Ethics Reform
New York State Model Ethics Code
Michigan Model Ethics Code

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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