Executive Orders on Ethics Are Good, Enforcement Is Better

According to an article in this week's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a rule prohibiting Georgia state employees from accepting gifts over $25 is not being enforced. At all.

How does the paper know these gifts are being made? Because lobbyists have to disclose their spending on state employees as well as on legislators (who are not restricted from taking such gifts). Governor Perdue, who included the rule in a 2003 executive order (soon after taking office), said that the rule would “safeguard [state employees'] ability to make objective, fair and impartial decisions.” Violation of the gift ban could mean losing your job, but it doesn't appear that there's anyone to enforce the gift ban.

I couldn't even find mention of the gift ban (or the executive order) on the site of the Georgia Ethics Commission, and it doesn't appear that it has jurisdiction over violations of the order's provisions. The commission's focus is on lobbyists and campaign finance.

Here's the gift ban ("gift" is defined as "anything of value exceeding $25"):

Sect. 4. Gifts
i. Except as provided in paragraph ii below, no employee, nor any person on his or her behalf, shall accept, directly or indirectly, any gift from any person with whom the employee interacts on official state business, including, without limitation, lobbyists and state vendors. If a gift has been accepted, it must be either returned to the donor or transferred to a charitable organization.

ii. Where appropriate for purposes of tradition, ceremony, or inter-governmental relations, or when acting as a representative of the Office of the Governor or an agency, an employee may accept a gift on behalf of an agency or the Office of the Governor.

According to the article, "vendors’ lobbyists reported spending about $106,000 on state workers in 2007 and 2008, although about one-third received gifts below the $25 threshold." That's not much, but that's just what vendors' lobbyists reported, and it doesn't include what they mistakenly reported on gifts to legislators forms.

Twenty-percent of the gifts went to employees of the Department of Economic Development. The department's spokesperson is quoted as saying, “'None of these expenses were for the personal gain' of employees. [All] were incurred 'in the context of promoting Georgia and its communities to create jobs.'

According to the exception in subsection ii, it's okay to accept gifts as "a representative of ... an agency ... on behalf of an agency." That would seem to cover any money spent on economic development employees. It also seems to conveniently cover any gift given to the governor who wrote the executive order, as pointed out by another Journal-Constitution article from earlier this year.

So it's not just a matter of enforcement. The provision also has a sizeable loophole, which gives almost any government employee an out: "I accepted it as a representative of my agency."

My favorite quote in the article comes from a member of the state transportation board, who was given several tickets to different sporting events by two companies that do business with the state. She said that lobbyists’ clients treated her not to win favor, but “because I like sports. ... That’s part of their community support. They’re good corporate citizens.”

The numbers don't appear to be too high, but the idea that an executive order was not designed to be enforced is a serious problem.

Executive orders look great when they're promulgated, but if they are not made part of the ordinary ethics process, it should be made clear that they are simply aspirational guidelines. The best thing is to start out with an order, in order to send a quick message that ethics are important, and then place the provisions in a bill and get the legislature to pass it. If the legislature won't pass it, the chief executive needs to set up a separate ethics commission for the executive branch to enforce the executive order. This is as true in local governments as it is in states and the federal government.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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