Below is Robert Wechsler's introduction to the Model Municipal Ethics Code. This is the place to comment on issues raised and positions taken in this introdcution.

Introduction

City Ethics' Model Code Project assumes that an ethics code is central to municipal ethics programs.

But this raises several issues. How important is an ethics code to an ethics program? Can an effective ethical environment be created without any sort of written ethics code? If an ethics code is necessary, should it be aspirational or in the form of a law (or, as in our Model Code, both), and if in the form of a law, should it be enforceable?

In the November 5 issue of the New York Times Book Review, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/books/review/Kinsley.t.html?ex=116434… Kinsley wrote</a>, "The biggest flaw in our democracy is ... the enormous tolerance for intellectual dishonesty. Politicians are held to account for outright lies, but there seems to be no sanction against saying things you obviously don't believe. ...

On November 15, 2006, David Damron of the <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-lamar1506nov15,0,3621262.story">Orla… Sentinel reported on Lawson Lamar</a>, the local state attorney's call for "sweeping new ethics laws he said would limit the influence of developers and other special interests on city and county governments. In a Nov.

<b>Open Letter to Illinois Chief Justice Robert R. Thomas</b>:

The news media are probably the most important single element in providing oversight in government ethics matters. And the most effective way to keep the news media from doing their job is to file a libel suit.

<div class="timestamp">September 27, 2006</div>
<div class="kicker">Broken Bench</div>
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How a Reviled Court System Has Outlasted Critics
</h1>

<div class="byline">By <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/william_gl…; title="More Articles by William Glaberson">WILLIAM GLABERSON</a></div>

The <i>New York Times</i> has been running a series of articles about municipal pension funds (by Mary Williams Walsh, Michael Cooper, and Danny Hakim, August 20, 22, 27, September 1, 4, 2006). The articles focus on two principal problems: (1) pensions have been increased, largely in order to get short-term cuts in negotiations with unions, and (2) calculations to determine the health of pension plans usually have little relationship to reality. Each problem is essentially an ethical problem.

<a href="http://www.csmonitor.com"><img src="http://www.csmonitor.com/csm_themes/html/themes/csm_simple-wide/images/…; alt="csmonitor.com - The Christian Science Monitor Online" border="0" height="42" width="500"></a>
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<a href="http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_4192705">http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_4192…;

<b>Colton credit card had phone-sex charges</b>

COLTON State and local authorities are investigating hundreds of phone-sex calls and dozens of hotel bills charged to the city-issued cell phone and credit card of Councilman Ramon Hernandez.

A Classic commentary on the Judiciary - with a comic (if a little sad) <a href="http://magic-city-news.com/article_6471.shtml&quot; target="_blank">demonstration</a> from my own Australia to paint the picture (rather well I thought...)