<p>Date posted: 2008-11-04<br />
<b>From:</b> http://www.folioweekly.com/folioblog/?p=723</p&gt;

Do ethics board members have a duty to follow more than the letter of their ethics code?

Financial disclosure scares citizens away from sitting on local boards and commissions. This is the “fact” stated every time any level of financial disclosure is discussed. In my state, Connecticut, all the financial disclosure that was required in a recent bill was the name of one’s employer, and yet the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities opposed it with the same old canard.

There is one local government conflict of interest that is often ignored because it was created at the federal level by a federal statute. The statute is known as <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode05/usc_sup_01_5_10_II_30_1…; target="”_blank”">the Hatch Act of 1939</a> (Title 5, Subchapter III), originally known as An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities (they don’t make statute names like they used to).

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New York politicians are making life hard for ethical politicians. “Present yourself as ethical,” they are effectively telling them, “and everyone will be harder on you when you don’t live up to expectations. Better to create no expectations at all.”

This isn’t what the government ethics community wants to hear.

Not all municipal ethics problems arise from a municipality. One place where there is a great deal of opportunity for municipal misconduct is the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D.C. (HUD)

HUD oversees and funds housing authorities across the country. It gets involved, directly and indirectly, in land and development deals and contracts.

One nearly untouchable aspect of government ethics is the role of parties.

This is less a problem in municipalities than at other levels of government, because most municipalities in the U.S. are nonpartisan, although parties still play a role. But many municipalities and, in some states, particularly in the Northeast, all municipalities are still partisan. And most counties are partisan, as well.

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In an upcoming book,<a href="http://www.e-elgar.co.uk/Bookentry_DESCRIPTION.lasso?id=13032"&gt; <i>The Rule of Law and Development,</i></a> Michael Trebilcock and Ron Daniels divide developing countries into three groups (according to an article in last week’s <i>Economist</I>):