Quebec Report Recommends Ethics Codes for All Local Governments; North Carolina Might Soon Be Requiring Codes, Too

Last week, I wrote about municipal corruption scandals in Montreal. This week, I'm happy to be able to write about a report requested by the province of Quebec, which determined that the province's municipalities should all have a code of ethics (only about 10% do now), that the largest cities and the counties should have ethics commissioners, and that financial disclosure and ethics training should be required. Contractors would be covered under the codes.

Ethics commissioners would make recommendations to councils rather than act themselves or with commissions, but councils' decisions could be appealed to the province level by both respondents and citizens.

This information comes from an article yesterday in Le Devoir, which I had translated into English by Google Translation. For those who read some French, putting the cursor on the English makes the French original of that paragraph appear. The translation is adequate, but sometimes comical.

Montreal's opposition is cheering the provincial report and calling for the city to quickly toughen its ethics code, according to a CBC article yesterday.

I will try to find the report and add a link to it here.

Quebec is not alone. Last week, a House bill requiring local government codes of ethics received initial approval by the North Carolina Senate. A final vote is supposed to come this week, but I haven't found any word of it yet. The UNC School of Government is working on a model code that, according to an article in the Rocky Mount Telegram, "some groups can follow." Hopefully, more on this will appear soon.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

---