Some municipalities limit some provisions to certain officials, so that, for instance, employees do not have to go through the same level of annual disclosure as officials do, or only officials and employees dealing with contracts, development, zoning, etc. need file annual disclosure forms. This is the place to discuss different levels of application of an ethics code's provisions to different levels and types of official and employee.

The ethics reforms coming out of New York and Utah provide two contrasting, yet equally questionable approaches. In New York state, ethics legislation was negotiated among the new governor, the assembly speaker, and the senate majority leader, behind closed doors. In Utah, the governor said he would issue an executive order.

As I state in my comments to section 207 of the model code, cutting the funding of ethics commissions is a popular way for politicians to prevent investigations from happening. Therefore, ethics reformers are always looking for new ways to ensure funding.

In Oregon, legislators decided to turn to local governments as a dedicated source of funding of an ethics commission that oversees local government officials.

What's the difference between wearing multiple hats and having conflicts of interest?

Former Vancouver City Manager Ken Dobell is the project manager (contractor, not employee) for a cultural precinct in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is also chair of the finance committee of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. He is also a long-time adviser to British Columbia's Premier, Gordon Campbell (under contract; formerly Deputy Minister to the Premier).

One of the most serious obstacles to ethics training is cynicism. For example, a councilman in South Lake Tahoe, California said, according to <a href="http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/article/20070115/NEWS/101150035">a recent article in the Tahoe <i>Daily Tribune</i></a>, that the California requirement of ethics training for all municipal officials is an indication of a breakdown in trust in local government and "It's not going to change behavior.

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<strong>How can an ethics commission be truly independent?</strong>
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In the model code I wrote as the beginning of what I hope will be a long public conversation about all aspects of municipal ethics, I suggest that a municipality's legislative body appoint members from a list given to them by the local League of Women Voters.

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When an ethics commission is appointed by the city's principal officials, can it possibly clear the air with respect to allegations against them? Baltimore's Board of Ethics has five members, four of them appointed by the mayor, three of those confirmed by the Council, and the fifth member appointed by the city solicitor, who is in turn a mayoral appointee.
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This is the place to share your experiences with and thoughts about problems faced in passing or improving municipal ethics codes, and possible solutions to these problems.

There's a lot of talk about organizational culture and the effect it can have on individuals' unethical conduct, but it's rare to find reported instances of poor organizational cultures that aren't extreme, such as Chicago. Even Enron had an excellent ethics program, and its misconduct appears to have been limited to high-level management.

When the United States was founded, it was not power or wealth or religious diversity that the Founding Fathers felt differentiated Americans from others, allowing them to found a republic, but public virtue.

A recent <i>New York Review of Books</i> essay by historian Edmund S. Morgan argued this convincingly. In the early nineteenth century, Americans "continued to regard public virtue as the hallmark of a republic, and they retained a doubt that other peoples were as well endowed with it as themselves."