Council Ethics Committees

Many local legislative bodies have ethics committees, even where there
is an ethics commission. The reason for these self-regulatory committees is that
these bodies have their own codes of conduct that go
beyond conflicts of interest, and which are enforced, discussed, and
amended separate from the city or county's ethics program. Some local ethics programs consist of nothing more than a council ethics committee and code of conduct, but that situation is not the topic of this blog post.<br>
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Council ethics committees can be confusing. For example, <a href="http://www.phillymag.com/news/2014/04/08/philadelphia-city-council-ethi…; target="”_blank”">this
week <i>Philadelphia</i> magazine ran an article</a> with the headline,
"City Council Has an Ethics Committee! (But It Never, Ever Meets).
Long live corrupt and contented Philadelphia." The ethics committee
has apparently not met for 20 years, even though, according to the
article, nine council members have been convicted over the past 32
years.<br>
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What's an ethics committee to do? It can't just slink away. As the article says, "that would lead to the headline 'City Council
Disbands Committee on Ethics,' which would let the public know that
a committee on ethics once existed, that it never, ever met, and
that ethics were so unimportant to City Council that it disbanded
the committee supposedly dedicated to policing ethics. That's
not a headline City Council wants."<br>
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There are a lot of things for a council ethics committee to do. It
could hold discussions of ethics problems that arise, even when there is no
complaint. It could consider changes to the council code of conduct.
In fact, it could schedule an annual meeting to discuss such
changes. It could discuss the city's ethics program, perhaps after
the ethics board files its annual report. It could hold an annual
training session. It could award employees who have done admirably ethical work.<br>
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In short, there is no excuse for such a committee to be dormant. Its
dormancy doesn't say that council members are either corrupt or so ethical that
it has no need to consider ethics issues. What it says is that the
council doesn't consider ethics issues to have a high priority, and
is concerned that any meeting on ethics will focus on member
misconduct, problems with the ethics program that the council may
not want to fix, the council's failure to provide ethical
leadership, its members' lack of understanding of ethical issues,
etc. In short, not meeting shows a lack of interest, understanding, and courage. Most of all, it shows a lack of professionalism, and a failure to understand that a professional approach to ethics is even a possibility.<br>
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Better that a legislative body see ethics committee meetings as an
opportunity to gain more understanding of ethical issues and to show
its interest in improving the ethics program. Even if they don't
really care, they should at least recognize that such discussions
send an important message to everyone in the government that they
should be considering the ethical aspects of matters and doing their
best not to engage in conduct that will lead to scandals that
undermine trust in the government.<br>
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Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
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