City Related

The city of Vallejo, California (pop. 117,000) is about to file for bankruptcy, primarily, it appears, to allow it to void union contracts and have a bankruptcy judge rather than negotiations work out a new contract. Sajan George, an adviser to struggling public entities, has said, "There's a wave of this coming across the U.S. What happens in Vallejo could definitely set a precedent."

This situation is certainly the result of economic forces:  recession, falling house prices and foreclosures, the closing of a shipyard and a Walmart. But there are other causes that fall into the realm of ethics.

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A quote from a lawyer in an article in today's New York Times brought me back to what I recently promised to discuss at the end of a blog entry about Elizabeth Wolgast's book, Ethics of an Artificial Person: Lost Responsibility in Professions and Organizations.

Daniel K. Webb, the head of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's legal team, said of the City Council's request that the mayor resign: "I have told the mayor, as his lawyer, that he should not consider that under any circumstances."

The Code of Professional Responsibility states that the duty of a lawyer to his client and his duty to the legal system are the same: to represent his client zealously within the bounds of the law. But lawyers often go beyond zealous representation on legal issues. They often provide non-legal advice, just as Mr. Webb did to the mayor.  What could the law possibly have to say about a public official's decision to resign in the face of a scandal harmful to Detroit?

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How a big-city police chief responds to his commission of an ethics violation is more important than the violation itself. The worst thing he can do is act as if he is above the law, as if ethics laws, not to mention ethics considerations, do not apply to him.

Sadly, Miami's police chief, John Timoney, has done the wrong thing almost every time he had the opportunity.

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According to a recent article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth's mayor, Mike Moncrief, made $633,000 last year from the oil and gas business. He also has an interest in several real estate developments. A committee, appointed by the mayor and council, will soon be making recommendations on rules for natural gas drilling and on fees that affect real estate development.

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Form of government issues are not generally considered to be part of government ethics.  But they are intertwined in important ways.

This can be seen from the New York City Council slush fund scandal.  According to an article in today's New York Times, it began when the Board of Estimate, a finance board in charge of writing the budget, was abolished in the charter revision of 1989.  This gave control of the budget to the Council.

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Ethics complaints are often brought for purely political reasons, and election time is the favorite time for bringing them.

According to an article in yesterday's Flint Journal, a Thetford Township Supervisor brought an ethics complaint before his own board against a township Trustee who is planning to run for his seat this year. The complaint raises a reasonable problem involving a property tax exemption, but it is clearly not a violation of the township's ethics code.

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Elizabeth Wolgast’s 1992 book, Ethics of an Artificial Person: Lost Responsibility in Professions and Organizations, raises some very important government ethics questions. I will deal with just one of them here.

The term “artificial persons” includes lawyers and government officials who are considered to act in the name of others. Wolgast’s book looks at the problems such artificial persons cause with respect to our ordinary views of such ethical issues as responsibility and accountability.

Too often, Wolgast says, lawyers and government officials hide behind their roles. I’m just representing my client as best I can, lawyers say. I’m just implementing policy, representing and helping my constituents, following legal advice.

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Ethics in a small town can be very problematic when one large company with special property interests comes into town. Whether it is a developer, a landfill owner, or other sort of business that seeks to get property or expand its holdings at an inexpensive price, its needs often lead it to tempt individual local government officials or dominate the town's politics.

In Franklin County (northeastern New York State), a new sort of business has been causing local governments ethics problems: wind farm companies. This has been well documented by anti-wind farm groups such as www.windaction.org.

It appears that officials in a few small towns entered into contracts, easements, and lease-option agreements with wind farm companies, and did not recuse themselves when decisions involving wind farm companies came before their board or council. It also appears that many of these towns have not required such recusal.

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Everyone knows it’s not right for government officials to favor their friends, but because friendships are so difficult to define, they don’t appear in ethics codes. Relatives can be defined, domestic partners can be defined, business associates can be defined, but not boyfriends or pals or old buddies. This is one of the limitations of dealing with ethics in the form of a law.

But the Massachusetts Ethics Commission, which deals with local government as well as state government officials, has found a way to deal with favoritism given to friends. According to its April 30 press release, a former county retirement board member was found to have violated the state conflict of interest law by awarding a building renovation contract to a friend and failing to disclose the friendship, and also by voting to hire his friend to manage the facility and again failing to disclose the friendship.

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Confidentiality is a sticky issue in ethics investigations. It appears to be the norm, but many people do not seem to understand why it exists, or what duties it creates.

An interesting confidentiality issue arose recently in Beaufort, South Carolina, according to an article in today’s Beaufort Gazette. A former mayoral candidate filed a complaint against the current mayor with the state Ethics Commission. The city attorney found out about the complaint and told the city council, which put out a press release about the complaint.

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