Crowdfunding a Local Government Ethics Program

Crowdfunding is a 21st-century way of funding projects that are not being funded by the government, the stock market, venture capitalists, or even angel investors. But it's really not as 21st-century as people think. For example, the Statue of Liberty's pedestal was crowdfunded back in 1885 (without the Internet, the crowdfunding was led by Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher of New York World newspaper).

Very few local government ethics programs are funded at all, and those that have funding are usually underfunded. Is there any prospect for crowdfunding these programs? One big advantage is that crowdfunding would make ethics programs be and appear truly independent (as long as there were rules prohibiting large contributions from those seeking benefits from the government).

Several ethics programs have been created or approved by citizen referendum, the voting version of crowdfunding (e.g., the ethics programs in San Diego, in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Broward counties in Florida, and in Rhode Island). Voters supported these referendums, often by high percentages, knowing that they would pay for them.

Crowdfunding would be less useful in creating an ethics program than in improving an ethics program by turning it from a passive ethics commission dependent on the city or county attorney to an active independent ethics commission that can hire at least one staff member of its own, providing independent training and advice, and initiate investigations and hold public hearings about problematic ethics issues.

But would enough citizens see an ethics program as valuable in order to ensure that sufficient funds were raised? And could the ethics program deliver sufficient results to ensure that citizens kept funding it year after year? Or would the successful crowdfunding of an ethics program shame the local legislative body into providing the program with a sufficient budget to allow it act effectively?

Crowdfunding a government ethics program would require the support of the news media, the local blogosphere, and local good government groups. It would also be helpful if members of more than one party or faction on the local legislative body supported the solution, after failing to get the legislative body to provide the ethics program with sufficient funding. A combination of anger at this failure and partial bipartisan support would make a big difference. The involvement of respected independents in the community would also be helpful, because independents are the ones most likely to see the legislative body's failure as the selfish act of both political parties to allow an oversight body to function effectively.

Crowdfunding a government ethics program would make a great experiment. It would allow citizens to better understand the value of such a program and to commit to it in an active way that would ensure continuing support for it. It would emphasize the nature of an ethics program as citizen oversight of those who manage their community, and ensure its true independence and, through that independence, the community's trust in it.

The precedent this experiment would create would be seen, in the community and in neighboring communities, perhaps nationwide, as a limit on elected officials' participation in their own oversight to extent they attempt to create obstacles to the effectiveness of the oversight.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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