Ethics Awards

Global Ethics, an organization run by Rushworth Kidder, author of Moral Courage and other books, has a good Ethics Newsline, which you can subscribe to. His lead article this week is about government ethics awards, inspired by what happened in Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa.

I think it's good to try positive approaches to local government ethics. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, after three county commissioners were convicted of extorting money from people seeking zoning changes back in 1992, the Hillsborough county commissioners sponsored a Moral Courage Award. Nominations are made by the public to a citizens' committee for someone who has "dared to speak out on issues" in order to help "disinfect" county politics. It appears that many of the awards have gone to citizens who fought development and other changes in the county, often in their own backyard.

In 2008, a posthumous nomination came in for Ralph Hughes, a wealthy building materials manufacturer and anti-tax campaigner who had given loads of money to county commissioners and others to push for development in everyone's backyards. The citizens' committee unanimously rejected the nomination, and selected instead a man who had "opposed a rule that makes homeowners install sewage-backflow valves." That doesn't sound like disinfection to me.

The county commission was upset, and decided to name the award after Hughes. At the next commission meeting, one award winner handed his trophy (a clear plastic obelisk) back to the commission.

And then, according to Kidder, "the IRS billed [Hughes'] estate for nearly $70 million in unpaid levies, and the U.S. Department of Justice is suing the company he owned to recover $300 million in back taxes." Hughes' son asked that his father's name be taken off the award, according to the Journal article.

Awarding the Person or the Conduct?
There are two issues here, only one of which Kidder focuses on. He says that "ethics is not an inoculation, but a process," and that people who act courageously in one situation, and get an ethics award, may in the future act in ways that undermine the purpose behind such an award. "If the honoree is plagued by subsequent moral failings, how effective will the award be in inspiring a new generation? Should we hold up as a moral exemplar someone who, one cold winter night, stood up for the homeless — only later to become a notorious wife-beater?"

Kidder recognizes that this is true of any award, not just ethics awards. Look at the controversy over Pete Rose, for instance, or later ballplayers who have taken illegal substances.

For me the problem here isn't that people might act badly after getting an award for acting good. The problem is recognizing the individual rather than the act. If a council member handles a difficult conflict situation in a very responsible way and gets an award for that conduct, it doesn't matter to the award if he later beats his wife, cheats on his taxes, or takes a bribe. What he did to get the award is still laudable.

As I argued in a recent blog post, people aren't separated into good and bad. They act well and badly in different situations. A politician who shows moral courage in opposition may show little when in power. A citizen who fights to prevent development in her neighborhood may push for development elsewhere if it helps her employer. That doesn't mean the moral courage was not worthy of emulation, only that people's personal interests often get in the way.

Naming Awards or Anything Else
By awarding specific conduct rather than an individual, it doesn't matter what that individual does in the future. But naming an award (or a school or a bridge or anything else) after an individual focuses solely on the individual. And this individual did more questionable things than fail to pay his taxes.

Not only had Hughes shown little or no moral courage in his dealings with government, he had given commissioners a great deal of money and, it is said, used hand signals at meetings to tell them how to vote. You don't give an ethics award to someone with whom you have a monetary relationship, that is, where there is a conflict.

In addition, there is nothing laudable about being against taxes, even if you actually do pay them. A former county employee is quoted by the Journal as saying, "it was strange to name an award for [Hughes]. ... The government gives it for being against the government. Strange as hell."

Governments should name things only after people who have consistently served the public interest rather than themselves. There is no sacrifice of one's personal interests in pushing for developments when you run a building materials company. There is no sacrifice of one's personal interests in opposing taxes when you are wealthy and expected to pay a lot of them. Which brings me to the next issue:

Which Sort of Ethical Conduct Should Be Awarded?
For me, the biggest problem with government ethics awards is the criteria to use, how to define ethical conduct.

The Hillsborough County award is specifically for moral courage, but moral courage is not even a virtue in and of itself. It is what is referred to as an enabling or instrumental virtue. That is, in many situations moral courage is required to act ethically. Acting ethically has two steps: recognizing the problem and acting on it. Moral courage is often necessary to go from the first step to the second step.

There are two kinds of moral courage in local government situations. One involves a citizen, official, or employee standing up publicly to government officials who use their power to intimidate or who make misrepresentations. Disagreeing on an issue does not otherwise require moral courage, only the courage to get up in front of an audience and speak.

For those who have something to lose, it requires much courage to take on those who can affect your job, hurt your business, or ruin your political future or your reputation in the community. But here, although moral courage enables an important act -- speaking truth to power -- it does not enable an ethical act, in the sense of government ethics.

The second sort of moral courage involves dealing responsibly with conflicts, the heart of government ethics:  disclosing and recusing, giving up a business or clients where there is an ongoing conflict, resigning from a board when conflicts make your membership seem improper. If done right, this conduct occurs without any fanfare and, therefore, is difficult to recognize. The more fanfare, the more likely the official is acting to score political points, which means there is little or no moral courage involved.

Officials' most difficult ethical conduct involves identifying a colleague's unethical conduct. It's easy to point out unethical conduct by one's opponents. But when one is a member of the majority, and the ethical environment is based on secrets, denial, and intimidation, any opposition or disclosure, especially regarding conflicts between personal interests and the public interest, can mean that the individual is cut off from power. In a local government with a poor ethical environment, it is highly unlikely that such an individual would be given an ethics award.

The Hillsbourgh county commissioners went wrong right at the start. The county's problem was not the citizens' lack of moral courage, it was a pay-to-play ethical environment that, most likely, other officials knew about (as did those who paid what they were asked), but lacked the moral courage to criticize publicly. The county government's problem was not one involving issues or developments, but poor ethics pure and simple. The citizens who lacked the courage were not ordinary citizens, but people in government or doing business with government. It is their ethical conduct that should be awarded by government. Let civic organizations such as Common Cause and the League of Women Voters give awards to citizens who speak out on issues.

Are Ethics Awards Valuable?
Whoever selects the person or conduct to be awarded a prize needs to be truly independent and yet knowledgeable about what goes on in politics in general and in the city or county specifically. That's a hard combination to find.

An ethics award focused on ethical conduct in the government ethics sense would either be very unsexy, or would tend to go to those who deserve it the least, especially when there is a poor ethical environment. Such awards would also go only to government officials and employees, lobbyists, and those who do business with the government, not the sort of people citizen committees are interested in (officials might have a conflict if they selected award winners). As in Hillsborough County, citizens prefer giving awards to citizens, and except for those doing business with the local government, citizens are rarely in a position to act ethically, in the government ethics sense.

So, although the idea of a government ethics award is a good one on paper, I think it would be very hard to make it work. The odds are that the term "ethics" would be greatly broadened, and as in Hillsborough, people actively pushing their personal interests would get the award. An ethics award certainly creates an appearance of propriety in a community, and might be worth doing for that reason alone, but it is not likely to make people act more ethically, in the government ethics sense.

I think it's preferable for government leaders to give extra raises and promotions to government employees who act ethically, who include ethical analysis in all the decisions they make. Publicly praising officials, of any party or none, who act ethically is also valuable. This sort of ethical leadership sends a message to everyone in government and everyone doing business with government that ethical conduct is highly valued.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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