You don't hear too much about recidivism in the municipal ethics world. One reason may be that it happens, but often at different levels, as a politician moves up the ladder.

It is very common for public servants to say (or others to say for them) that they did not feel they had a true conflict or did not understand the law. And often this is true. But why so often do those same people often try to hide the fact that they did not disclose their conflict (or the extent of it) or do something about it until they had no other choice?

The big story this week from Largo (not Key Largo, but a West Coast town), Florida has a little bit of everything in it. I don't think any ethics code would deal with what occurred, but the situation certainly raises a number of important ethical issues in a municipal government context.

The story involves a city manager's announcement that he was going to change his gender, and, one week later, the city commission's vote (5 to 2) to put him on paid leave and begin the process of firing him.

The Supreme Court of California has handed down a decision that could have a significant impact on conflicts of interest cases. In <a href="http://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/people-v-chacon-33704"&gt; The People v. Chacon, S125236 (February 8, 2007)</a>, the court found that Chacon, a former council member charged with a conflict of interest, could not use the defense that she had acted upon the advice of the city attorney.

<a href="http://davisvanguard.blogspot.com/2007/02/conflict-of-interest-on-count… an interesting, intelligent lay discussion</a> about a particular alleged conflict of interest, and how to deal with local conflicts in general. It centers around an entry in a local-politics-oriented blog in Davis, California.

Transparency is one of the most important elements of government ethics. And yet government ethics itself is often kept secret. Respect for the privacy of those investigated is given preference over the rights of residents to know what is going on. Ethics commissions often do not file annual reports and, when they are required to, the reports are rarely placed on a city's website.

Fred Anderson's review of Gordon S. Wood's book <i>Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different</I> in a recent issue of the <i>New York Review of Books</i> contains a passage on government ethics that gives an interesting context to our thoughts about it.

One of the best ways to create a more ethical environment in local government is to have more people run for office. The more people who run for office, the more pressure is put on the closed world that many local governments preserve. This closed world is preserved through the lack of interest not only of voters, but also of potential candidates, who feel the only way to get elected is to know the right people in the right way. Few people know what the options are.

Either the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is the head of a vicious manhunt unknown since the days of J. Edgar Hoover, or Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent J. Fumo has not only failed to apologize for all that he has done, but he has, like so many unethical politicians before him, gone to the other extreme: denying every accusation and presenting himself as a victim.

This is the place to discuss negotiating with unions regarding penalties that apply to their municipal employee members. This is a sensitive area, where open discussion could be especially helpful to preventing friction by considering union perspectives and requirements as part of the process of preparating or amending an ethics code.