<br><br>
I recently read an important social science classic, <b><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=XsUojihVZQcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=ha…; target="”_blank”">Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life</a></b> by

<br>
How you present an ethics provision can make all the difference.
Take a pay-to-play ordinance proposed in Fort Wayne, which would
limit the amount of contributions and gifts that can be given to
city officials by an individual or entity if it wants to have a
no-bid contract with the city.<br>
<br>

<br>My last post about Dennis F. Thompson's book <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Congress-Individual-Institutional-Corrupti…; target="”_blank”">Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption</a></b> is a
miscellany of interesting quotes and valuable ideas.<br>
<br>
Study on the Effect of Allegations on Voting:  "Campaign and

Constituent service is a basic legislative role that I have pretty
much ignored in my blog (<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/425&quot; target="”_blank”">click here to read the
principal exception</a>). Government ethics focuses too much on
votes and self-serving conduct, and too little on the ways in which
council members and other government officials help their
constituents in special or inappropriate ways. Constituent service

In his book <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Congress-Individual-Institutional-Corrupti…; target="”_blank”">Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption</a></b>,
Dennis Thompson discusses two tendencies that lead to the
overlooking or obscuring of institutional corruption’s significance.
Those who bring or judge charges tend to individualize misconduct.

The <i>American Bar Association Journal</i> does a list of the best law-related
blogs each year, and I thought I'd ask my readers to help get this list to work for a good cause: getting more lawyers to learn about local government ethics. City Ethics will get nothing out of being named to the list. To
see last year's list (it's broken up into categories; City Ethics

<br>Looking at government ethics through the appearance standard, as
Dennis Thompson did in his book <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Congress-Individual-Institutional-Corrupti…; target="”_blank”">Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption</a></b>,
reveals the great importance of independence to ethics advice and
enforcement. No one is in a worse position to see appearances of

<br><br>
In <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/ethics-congress-i-institutional-corru…; target="”_blank”">my

first post</a> on Dennis Thompson's book <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Congress-Individual-Institutional-Corrupti…; target="”_blank”">Ethics

My second volume of summer reading is a classic, Dennis F.
Thompson's <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Congress-Individual-Institutional-Corrupti…; target="”_blank”">Ethics

In Georgia, Community Improvement Districts (CIDs) are a creation of
state government (they're in the amended 1984 state constitution)
that involves local governments in serious potential conflicts of
interest, in order to allow developers to fund their public
infrastructure with tax-free bonds. CIDs are a clever idea, but
cleverness is often inconsistent with government ethics. Smith,