Regional Ethics Commissions via Interlocal Cooperation Agreements

On today's Palm Beach County (FL) Board of Commissioners agenda is approval of an Interlocal Agreement with the city of Lake Worth. The agreement is one of many that will be entered into between cities and towns in the county to give the county ethics commission jurisdiction over the municipalities' ethics training, advice, disclosure, and enforcement. The agreement is attached; see below.

The reason that this relationship takes this particular form is that Florida is one of many states that have an Interlocal Cooperation Act (passed in 1969) to provide a platform for local governments to cooperate.

Although many states have interlocal cooperation acts, very few ethics commissions have been formed pursuant to interlocal cooperation agreements. There is one in Northwest Indiana, the Shared Ethics Advisory Commission, founded in 2005, consisting of five or so cities and towns (the commission does not appear to have a website, but here is its ethics code).

There are three regional and ten county-cities ethics commissions in Kentucky, all formed by interlocal cooperation agreements (see p. 24 of a 2000 auditor's report on ethics programs in Kentucky). These were created pursuant to a statute that allows for the use of interlocal cooperation agreements to create such commissions (KRS 65.003, 1994). More might have been formed since the 2000 report, but I couldn't find anything online.

The Northern Kentucky Regional Ethics Authority, for instance, involves fourteen cities and one county. Members pay $600 in the initial year, and $300 every year thereafter for services that include financial disclosure collection, open records request responses, and advisory opinions. Jurisdictions can be asked to reimburse the authority for any hearings that "include extensive use of staff time or resources to investigate."

I think county-cities and regional ethics programs are a good way to save money, a good way to create a commission that is independent of the politicians in any particular town or city, and a good way to be able to afford at least one independent ethics officer to oversee training and advice, and to be the staff member for the ethics commission. Towns and smaller cities either cannot afford an independent staff member, are unwilling to pay for one, or prefer to let the town or city attorney, that is, a political appointee, act as staff and adviser, so that the officials in power have better control over the ethics process.

If there is a clear way to set up regional ethics programs, money can be saved, and the quality of the ethics program can be improved, why are there so few? Because local politicians do not want to turn ethics over to any independent body unless they are forced to, either by the sort of scandals that hit Palm Beach County, or by a state government that has the power to take ethics out of the hands of local governments.

The NW Indiana EC is the work of a smart and ethically knowledgeable fellow, Ed Charbonneau, who was, at the time, executive director of the NW Indiana Local Government Academy at Indiana University Northwest. The Kentucky county and regional ECs were created pursuant to a state statute.

County-cities and regional ethics programs should be a topic for discussion by every local government that wants a good ethics program at a far lower cost than they could provide themselves, and is willing to give up control over this very sensitive area. If anyone knows of any other county-cities or regional ethics programs, please let me know via comment or e-mail.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

---