Muncie, Indiana, and the Applicability of the ASPA Code of Ethics for a City Council:

According to an article in the Muncie (IN) Star Press, the Muncie City Council voted 5-4 not to adopt the American Society for Public Administration’s ethics code, something that hundreds of citizens at the meeting favored.

Apparently, the one non-Council member who spoke out against voting for the code was the City Attorney, who “worried the proposed code of ethics was geared more toward administrators than a legislative body, and that it would create separation-of-power issues.”

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The ASPA code certainly is geared more toward administrators, but is there really a separation-of-powers issue, since the administration was not somehow forcing the code on the legislative body, and the code doesn't require the council to deal with the administration other than in a constitutional manner?

City Ethics’ Model Code Project recommends including the ASPA code in a city’s ethics code, because its aspirational language is appropriate for everyone, and it complements the conflicts of interest provisions that are intended to be enforced. I would not recommend it as the best aspirational code for a city council alone (as part of a general ethics code, the great majority of the people covered by it are not legislators), but there's nothing harmful in it, and a lot that is appropriate and is not found in most ethics codes.

Click below to read the ASPA Code, with minor amendments that would make it a good aspirational code for a city council. It would be better to gear an aspirational code more specifically to a legislative body, but when nothing is being done, this is an easily available code to employ or to start with. What do you think?