Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote an excellent <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/sunday-review/hard-truths-about-discl…; target="”_blank”">op-ed
piece for the New York <i>Times</i></a> last Sunday. It was about
disclosure, more specifically about the way disclosure sometimes
neither leads to more transparency, nor prevents what it is intended
to prevent. In the government ethics situation, that would mean

It's not every day that a neighboring town makes <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/nyregion/connecticut-police-officers-…; target="”_blank”">the
front page of the New York <i>Times</i></a>. It's especially surprising when
the reason is, at heart, a local government ethics problem.<br>
<br>

The <i>Blind Men and the Elephant</i> is an ancient Hindu fable that illustrates the tendency for a person to think that he has grasped the whole of a situation when, in fact, only a part of it is understood. This will be shown to be the case with government ethics programs based on a study of twelve municipalities of varying populations in the United States. It is a global concern that, as a result of inefficient, wasteful and corrupt dissipation of limited resources, services are diminished and the public trust lowered.

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

As I near the end of writing my local government ethics book, I am going
over local government ethics codes looking for unusual, but valuable
provisions to include in a special section that follows my discussion of the
run-of-the-mill provisions.<br>
<br>
I would like to share one of these provisions that is truly worth thinking about. It appears in the <a href="http://www.colocode.com/windsor/windsor_00b.pdf&quot; target="”_blank”">Windsor, CO

<h1>What’s missing from new Jacksonville ethics office? Money</h1>

<div>
<h2>No budget or staff yet, despite being adopted by City Council last summer.</h2>
</div>

<div><strong>Posted:</strong> January 17, 2012

Local governments often give special recognition to individuals and
organizations. It's part of promoting the good works that are being
done in the community. But it is also, of course, a form of
preferential treatment. For every individual and organization that
is recognized for good works, there are many others that are not
recognized.<br>
<br>
If each high-level official could provide his own special
recognition to individuals and organizations in the community, then

One of the most damaging kinds of preferential treatment is one that
is hard to pin on any one individual:  public works work done
for some, but not for others, or done for some before being done for
others. Whether or not this is done in any particular city or
county, people talk about it, speculating that it is done, talking
about things they've seen and heard. It's an important part of the
perception that local government is run for those in government and

An ethics bill in the District of Columbia, sponsored by council
member Muriel Bowser, went quickly through committee and was passed
by the council, with only one dissenting vote, on December 20 (<a href="http://www.dccouncil.us/files/user_uploads/event_testimony/ethics_final…; target="”_blank”">the

To commemorate the death of Václav Havel, here are some
quotations from his work that are relevant to government ethics:<br>
<br>
"The prerequisite for everything political is moral. Politics really
should be ethics put into practice."<br>
<br>
“Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and
visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time,
gain in political significance.” <br>
<br>
Living in the Truth:  "A person who has been seduced by the