The Joke at the Heart of Local Government Ethics Programs
Stephen Colbert has been doing a great job satirizing the current
federal campaign finance situation. He has especially made a mockery
of the Super PAC, a means of allowing individuals and entities to
make unlimited contributions to a candidate's campaign under the
guise of independent expenditures. Colbert has shown how weak the
rules on collaboration are, how the Super PAC is effectively, if not
constitutionally, no different than a campaign committee. (Check out <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/16/stephen-colbert-pac-parody_n_1…; target="”_blank”">a five-part Huffington Post series</a> on what Colbert has been doing, complete with videos.)<br>
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Government ethics could use the same treatment. With government
ethics, the joke isn't that contributions to Super PAC allow exactly
the same level of possible corruption as campaign contributions
(whatever the narrow Supreme Court majority may think). With
government ethics, the joke is that at the heart of nearly every
local government conflict of interest program is a big conflict of
interest.<br>
<br>
That conflict of interest is the two, and sometimes three, hats worn
by the mayor and/or council. Those hats are: (1) they are officials subject to the
jurisdiction of the ethics commission; (2) they are the appointing authority of
ethics commission members; and (3) they are sometimes also the adjudicator of ethics violations
and penalties.<br>
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I have never heard an argument in favor of allowing
officials to select those who will have jurisdiction over their conflicts of interest. What is needed is acknowledgment of the clear absurdity of having a
conflict at the heart of a program devoted to conflicts. When this is acknowledged, an alternate approach is taken: asking community organizations to select ethics commission members (see <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/770" target="”_blank”">my blog post</a> on the jurisdictions that do this).<br>
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Considering that democracy requires a defense of decisions made by
our representatives, the failure to explain why there is a conflict at the heart of so many ethics programs is more than a joke. It is a travesty of
our political system. And yet it happens again and again. It is the
norm, although the alternate approach is on the upswing.<br>
<br>
So until Stephen Colbert or some other comic turns his attention to
local government ethics, it is important that we call our
representatives on this. We need to ask them to defend their
decision to wear multiple hats in a program intended to prevent
the wearing of multiple hats.<br>
<br>
And if they don't answer, they should be made fun of. Citizens
should act peacefully to draw attention to the travesty that mayors and local
legislators make of government ethics programs. Here's one way to do
this. Citizens could wear multiple hats to council meetings where
government ethics matters are discussed. They could offer the hats
to the council members. And when they are refused, they could
demand an explanation. They could use this quotation, from Terry L.
Cooper's excellent book, <i>The
Responsible Administrator</i> (Jossey-Bass, 1998):<ul>
<blockquote>The practicality of conduct is never
sufficient in and of itself. Unless a course of action can be
adequately explained on ethical grounds, it is not a responsible
act.</blockquote></ul>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
203-859-1959