The Public Sea and Local Government Ethics Jurisdiction

Most of George Frederickson's lecture, "<a href="http://academic.udayton.edu/richardghere/MPA%20524/2011%20course/Freder…; target="”_blank”">Searching for Virtue in the Public Life: Revisiting the Vulgar Ethics Thesis</a>," involves what he calls "the modern extended state," the "vast public
sea" in which governments float. This public sea includes
entities with various "shades of publicness":  nonprofit and
professional organizations, contractors and developers, lobbying
firms, political parties, unions (public, construction, and others),
and watchdog groups, as well as single-purpose jurisdictions
(school, water, transit, and sewer districts and authorities),
public-private organizations of all sorts, charter schools,
utilities and other public monopolies, tribes, and numerous
quasi-governmental agencies.<br>
<br>

These entities are involved in the governance of our communities,
enter into contracts or take grants from our local governments, and
take managerial and service-delivery functions out of the hands of
civil servants. The result, in terms of government ethics, is the
removal of patronage, nepotism, embezzlement, and other sorts of
misuse of office out of government and into these other entities.<br>
<br>
These entities are generally exempt from government ethics laws, and
their officers and employees do not receive ethics training or
advice and are not required to make disclosures. This huge hole in
government ethics programs is expanding at the same time as the
effects of transparency laws are shrinking.<br>
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The result is that the temptations toward and
opportunities for ethical misconduct, and for getting away with it, are growing in number, and fiduciary duties are becoming dispersed and watered down.<br>
<br>
Frederickson says that "the rise of the modern extended state is the
dominant feature of our public life and of contemporary public
administration." And yet it is not at all the dominant feature of
either administrative or government ethics. This is a mistake.<br>
<br>
There are ways for a government ethics program to embrace the
extended state, in such a way as to limit the opportunities for
ethical misconduct and to inculcate in those who work in the public sea
the same sort of idea of fiduciary duty that the public
administration profession has inculcated in administrators.<br>
<br>
The way to do this is (1) to give ethics programs jurisdiction over
any person or entity that seeks or obtains special benefits from a government or acts on behalf of a government, under contract with the government, under the government's supervision, or with a board whose members are appointed by a government; (2)
to require that all these individuals and at least all the managers of
these entities receive ethics training and make disclosures of their
relationships with officials, their families, and their businesses and business associates;
and (3) to provide ethics advice to all of these individuals and
entities.<br>
<br>
The best local government ethics programs do at least some of this.
But when even government agencies fight being under a government
ethics program's jurisdiction, it is hard to get others to accept
this oversight. Local officials need to recognize that a government
ethics program cannot effectively prevent, discover, or enforce
against ethical misconduct without the full involvement of everyone
who acts for the community, whether government, district, authority,
quasi-government, public-private, contractor, grantee, or permittee.<br>
<br>
It needs to be all or nothing, to be effective, to be fair, and to deal with government activities as they are seen by the public, not as they may exist in law.<br>
<br>
A government ethics program should not
distinguish, in its jurisdictional reach, in any way that the public would not distinguish. The
public doesn't know or care whether the people who pick up their
garbage, run their senior center, or provide their water is the
local government or not. These are services provided by or for the
government or with the government's oversight. But whichever way
things are done, it is the local government that decides
(or the state in the name of local governments, since local
governments are, after all, state entities, but most people don't realize that, either).<br>
<br>
Although along with administrative ethics professionals, I stress
the importance of creating a healthy ethics environment, the health of the ethics
environment within a government organization becomes less valuable
as government functions are accomplished outside of government,
strictly defined. This increases the importance of "vulgar ethics,"
which has little concern with environments or leadership, but rather
focuses on dealing responsibly with conflicts and preventing ethical
misconduct through training, advice, disclosure, and regulation.<br>
<br>
For more on this topic, check out the following City Ethics blog
posts:<br>
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/125&quot; target="”_blank”"><br>
</a></span><a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/125">Contracting:
A Growing Ethics Problem in the Age of Privatization</a><br>
</span><a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/privatization-and-transparency&quot; target="”_blank”">Privatization
and Transparency</a><br>
</span><a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/good-example-problems-can-arise-priva…; target="”_blank”">A
Good Example of Problems That Can Arise from Privatization</a><br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
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