The Problems with a New Report on Chicago's Level of Corruption
What is corruption? I try not to use this word with respect to
government ethics, because it is commonly thought of as having to do
with criminal misconduct such as bribery, kickbacks, fraud, and
embezzlement. There is, however, the term "institutional corruption," which
deals with legal misconduct that undermines public trust. And right
there in the middle is government ethics, which involves illegal but
not criminal misconduct. All very confusing.<br>
<br>
Yesterday, a report entitled "<a href="http://www.uic.edu/depts/pols/ChicagoPolitics/leadingthepack.pdf" target="”_blank”">Chicago
and Illinois, Leading the Pack in Corruption</a>" was published by
the University of Illinois at Chicago political science department, timed to coincide with the <a href="https://webapps.cityofchicago.org/EthicsTaskForce/forums/list.page" target="”_blank”">Chicago
Task Force on Ethics Reform</a>'s first public hearing. While
calling for ethics reforms, the report uses one statistic only to
name Chicago the most corrupt city in the country: federal
public corruption convictions during the period 1976-2010.<br>
<br>
Are these professors arguing that ethics reforms will substantially
decrease criminal convictions? I think that the creation of an
independent, comprehensive ethics program could do this by
substantially improving the city government's ethics environment,
but the professors are not calling for this. They are calling for
six ethics reforms, some of them substantive, some of them
procedural, but certainly not amounting to a qualitatively different
ethics program. Nor have they, or anyone else, done the research
that might create a factual basis for their link between ethics
reform and criminal convictions.<br>
<br>
What stood out for me from the statistics was the decrease in
Chicago-area convictions from the nineties to the oughts, from 610
to 367. This huge forty-percent decrease is not mentioned in the
report. Does this reflect ethics reforms? Or were there other
causes?<br>
<br>
The fact is that criminal convictions are a meaningless statistic
when it comes to government ethics, or even government corruption.
Convictions are mostly dependent on sting operations, and
instituting them can be a very political decision. The statistics
could just as easily be interpreted as showing that Chicago's feds
are the best in the country at getting their men. Or that the
Justice Department puts more resources into Chicago because they
feel it is the most corrupt city in the country; this can be a
self-fulfilling view.<br>
<br>
In fact, ethics violation statistics are no more meaningful. There
are so many reasons why a proceeding does not end in a finding of a
violation. And there are so many reasons that complaints are not
filed and that those that are filed are dismissed. Some of the
cities and counties with the worst ethics environments have very few
findings of an ethics violation, or none at all, because their
ethics programs, if they exist at all, are not trusted or are not
trustworthy.<br>
<br>
There are no simple correlations in government ethics. It is, I
think, dishonest to present statistics that have no clear connection
to the reforms one is seeking, implying that there is a connection.
It might make an impact to have headlines that say Chicago is the
most corrupt city in the country. The corruption displayed in the
statistics, even if it still existed, would require reforms that go
far beyond what the professors have recommended. Ethics laws can
only do so much. Aldermen need to give up some of their power in
their districts, more oversight is needed as well as better
leadership and more funding for the ethics board and inspector
general offices (not to mention consolidation). The ethics
environment has to be changed to one where conflicts are openly
discussed, where employees feel duty bound to report violations
(rather than accepting of them, or afraid to say a word), where the
public comes to expect more of those who run their community, and
where government leaders are truly committed to doing what it takes.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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