Ethics Reports and Efforts in New Orleans

New Orleans must have the largest number of civic organizations that focus on government ethics, and the greatest amount of activity among them. There is the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a watchdog group that has filed ethics complaints (see my two blog posts that mention them:  1  2 ). There is Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans, which has lobbied for a number of ethics reforms locally and at the state level.

There is Common Good, a coalition that is trying to bring together government, business, and civil society, as well as the diverse groups that make up New Orleans. And there is the Bureau of Governmental Research, whose reports often take into account good government concerns.

Social Trust and Trust in Government
A report called "Public Integrity and Social Trust" by Common Good's executive director, Michael A. Cowan, is especially interesting. It looks at the relationship between social trust, trustworthy public institutions, and economic opportunity. Most valuable is the way Cowan looks at three different views of this relationship.

Some believe that you have to have social trust in order to build the social glue through voluntary associations and networks to make it possible for business and governmental institutions to function properly.

Some believe that only through free markets can local economies flourish, allowing governments to have the resources to address public concerns and allowing people to form voluntary associations. They see governments as standing in the way of business through regulation and undermining it through pay-to-play, nepotism, and other ethical misconduct.

Some believe that you cannot have social trust without a trustworthy government managing the community. Eliminating ethical misconduct in government raises the trust of a community, and allows for trust within and among voluntary associations, and in business.

Cowan, and the good government community in general, embraces the third view of the relationship between social and public trust and business. It is hard to have social trust when certain groups are using government to profit themselves and their friends and families. And legitimate businesses stay away from such a community.

The problem with seeing business as the answer is that businesses are often central to a poor ethics environment, profiting from special relationships with those in government and intentionally keeping other businesses out, even though that would help the community as a whole.

Taking Procurement Out of a Council's Hands
Also worth a look is a May 2012 report from the Bureau of Governmental Research entitled "Private Services in the Public Interest: Reforming Jefferson Parish's Unusual Approach to Service Contracting." Jefferson Parish's approach, which is unfortunately not all that unusual, consists of allowing council members to hand out many professional service contracts, without a bid. Contracts relating to a district are under the control of that district's council member.

Why would council members want to have this power, besides the fact that everyone likes power and control? The report makes the advantage to council members clear:

A system that gives elected officials or their appointees broad discretion suffers from a fundamental conflict of interest: Officials with extraordinary power to select service providers are elected in campaigns financed in varying (but almost always significant) degrees by the very people who later seek, and often receive, such contracts.

While elected officials always insist that there is no nexus between campaign contributions and contracts, many of the firms that compete for professional service contracts are generous contributors to council members’ campaigns. According to BGR’s review of campaign finance reports filed with the Louisiana Board of Ethics, the current council members received roughly $580,000 in campaign contributions in 2011 from parish service contractors and their principals. This amount accounted for 43% of the contributions the councilmembers received last year.

There are evaluation committees, but council members do not need to follow their recommendations. The result is often very expensive to taxpayers. For example, a council member selected an evaluation committee's fourth choice for a big performing arts center project, and the the project ended up "years behind schedule and $18 million (68%) over budget."

The report goes on to recommend some good reforms.

A Community Listening Initiative
Finally, the Times-Picayune ran an article this week announcing a program by the city's Ethics Review Board called a "community listening initiative," a series of "listening sessions" throughout the city to hear residents' views and perceptions of ethics in city government. The board wants to meet with neighborhood associations and community organizations to explain its role in administering the city's ethics code and "promoting the public's confidence" in city government.

Unfortunately, the board appears to be taking a passive approach, asking organizations to contact it. And the article sends interested people to the board's website, which had no mention of the program five days after the article appeared. The website needs a great deal of work (for recommendations on improving ethics commission websites, see the section of my book on the topic).

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

203-859-1959