Ethics Reform

Government ethics is a process issue. Process issues appeal more to, and are better understood by, lawyers. Although corruption may be seen as a substance issue, the ways to prevent it are considered procedural. So at election time, most candidates choose not to talk about ethics reform, at least in any detail. When they raise the issue, it is usually to portray themselves as clean and ethical, and sometimes to portray others as corrupt.

This process-substance distinction is rarely...

“In Albany, they’re really, really good at coming up with something that looks like reform, and that they tout as reform, but really falls short.”

—New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, quoted in yesterday's New York Times with respect to the chances of the state legislature passing the governor's public campaign financing plan. This is the same...

Many people believe that conflicts of interest are in and of themselves bad, and that government ethics laws should prevent those with conflicts of interest from becoming public servants. Many people believe that government ethics is about being good or bad. When the two come together in one person and one speech, the result can be fireworks.

People who have misconceptions about government ethics also tend not to be able to distinguish between different sorts of conflict situation...

In this, the third blog post on the Colorado ethics commission situation, I would like to look at the problems that can arise from placing an ethics code in a constitutional document, either a charter or, as in the Colorado case, the state constitution.

It is an unfortunate fact that, in many jurisdictions, legislators are so opposed to the creation of an effective government ethics program that the task of ethics reform can be accomplished only via charter revision or a referendum...

[Note: I have made changes throughout this blog post, based on a February 25 e-mail message from the COG executive director]

It should feel good when a pet idea of yours becomes a reality. My pet idea is the regional ethics program, whose biggest successes have been of the countywide variety, such as Miami-Dade County and Palm Beach County, FL (there is also a Broward County program, but it is run by an inspector general). There are a few regional ethics commissions in Kentucky,...

You Can't Teach Ethics
In their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Crown, 2010), Chip and Dan Heath say that there are two kinds of mindset:  the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. Those with a fixed mindset believe that things and people are the way they are. There are people of integrity and there are people who are corrupt. Those with a growth...