City Related

I recently wrote about the problem of having a toothless ethics commission in a Connecticut city.
According to <a href="http://www.newstimes.com/ci_11960785&quot; target="”_blank”">an article</a>
in yesterday's Danbury <span>News-Times,</span>
it's <i>good</i> that another Connecticut municipality's ethics commission
is toothless.<br>
<br>
But the story has less to do with teeth than it has to do with what

In third world countries, corruption is said to grease the wheels of
commerce. We don't like to believe that this is true in the U.S., and
we certainly don't have to grease the palms of ordinary government
employees in order to get any service.<br>
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But what would happen if pay-to-play were truly brought to its knees?<br>
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Anonymous complaints are both important and problematic. Without
anonymous tips and hotlines, our justice system would not work nearly
as well as it does. With ethics programs, officials involved in
unethical conduct often have great power in the community, and the
people who know what they are doing are often the very people most
vulnerable to their retribution.<br>
<br>
And yet there is an air of cowardice around anonymous complaints,
possibly even moreso now that people make anonymous attacks on public

One of the biggest obstacles to ethics reform in some U.S. states and
Canadian provinces is the possibility of state enforcement of local
ethics. For example, in Connecticut, there has been talk for years at
the state level about either having state enforcement or state
requirements. Even though it has all been talk, and the towns and
cities have successfully talked it down, the same town and city CEOs
have said that it's silly to talk about local ethics reform when

The most complicating (sic) part of conflicts of interest is the being
interested part. When one is interested in something, not necessarily
in a financial way, it can be very hard to get the emotional distance
necessary to analyze a conflict properly. In other words, it's hard for
many people to admit the possibility that they may have a conflict and
then to determine rationally what should be done about it.<br>
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A case in point involves the village attorney of Mokena, IL.<br>
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Rarely does an ethics commission get a clear chance to show it has no
favoritism. The Nevada Commission on Ethics will soon get that chance.<br>
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On the legislative immunity front, according to <a href="http://www.projo.com/generalassembly/Irons_ethics_case_01-21-09_SID1GAH…; target="”_blank”">an
article in the Providence <span>Journal,</span></a>
a date has been set for the Rhode Island Supreme Court to hear the

Everyone knows the three lies jokes. Every topic has its three lies,
and the third one is the punch line. Unfortunately, in government
ethics there aren't any punch lines, but there are lies, or at least
common rhetoric that isn't true, what I will refer to as "untruths."
Those who believe in effective government ethics programs need to be
ready to respond to them when they arise.<br>
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There's a lot of talk among government ethics practitioners about how
important it is for ethics commissions to have teeth, that is, the
ability to at least reprimand and fine government officials for ethics
violations. Requiring council approval of ethics recommendations brings elected officials into the ethics process and politicizes it. And politicizing an ethics program undermines
its goal of gaining the public's trust in elected officials to govern
for the public, not for themselves and their families, friends, and

The conclusion of <a href="http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090225/COLUMNIST/902250326&quot; target="”_blank”">an
op-ed column</a> in today's Sarasota <span>Herald-Tribune</span>
about the mess in Venice that <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/652&quot; target="”_blank”">I wrote about yesterday</a>