Detroit’s mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick is the new poster boy for misuse of office, lack of transparency, and covering up unethical behavior.

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/opinion/07blumenthal.html?_r=1&scp=1&…; target="”_blank”">An op-ed piece</a> by Pollster.com editor Mark Blumenthal, in yesterday’s New York <i>Times</I>, brought up an interesting point about the transparency of political polls. I would like to take his piece a step further.

An Alaskan state representative needs a new kidney. The <a href="http://www.legis.state.ak.us/PDF/25/Bills/HB0109Z.PDF&quot; target="”_blank”">new state ethics law</a> does not allow gifts over $250. It has a compassionate gift exemption, but it only allows compassionate gifts with a fair market value less than $250. This is one of many unforeseen consequences that comes from ethics codes (or any legislation, for that matter).

You hear it again and again: “I didn’t know. I wasn’t told.” It’s the ultimate defense. Rarely do you hear, “I didn’t know, but I should have. It’s my responsibility to know and make sure I’m told things like this. I will act as if I knew, because I should have known.”

According to <a href="http://www.thestarpress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008802050348&quot; target="”_blank”">an article in the Muncie (IN) <i>Star Press,</a></i> 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.

The new mayor of Indianapolis, Greg Ballard, who ran as a candidate who would bring ethics to city government, is already embroiled in a controversial ethics issue. He has appointed Robert T. Grand as chair of the Capital Improvement Board (CIB), which manages the city’s convention center and sports stadiums, including that of the Indiana Pacers, a basketball team owned by the Simon family. There is a good chance that the Pacers' lease will be renegotiated next year.

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Good, open government does more than give people reason to trust those who spend their tax dollars. It even gives people a better environment.

The Ethics Resource Center’s first National Government Ethics Survey has just come out, and is available free at the <a href="http://www.ethics.org/&quot; target="_blank">ERC’s website</a>, although it requires registration. It is the result of a random 2007 telephone poll of government employees, and is part of a series of polls looking at ethics in different sorts of workplaces. City Ethics' Founder, Carla Miller, was on the Advisory Group for this survey.

<i>Articles have been written putting into question the study on which the following blog entry was based.