One of the most serious obstacles to ethics training is cynicism. For example, a councilman in South Lake Tahoe, California said, according to a recent article in the Tahoe Daily Tribune, 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. [It] creates a job for someone."
How can an ethics commission be truly independent?
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.
I did not mean to prefer this particular organization, but to get people thinking (and talking) about the possibility of having an independent,...
On November 15, 2006, David Damron of the Orlando Sentinel reported on Lawson Lamar, 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. 2 letter to city and county leaders in Orange and Osceola [counties], Lamar urged them to pass new laws that would dramatically limit campaign...
Contracting is one of the municipal ethics issues that is most often overlooked as an ethics issue. One reason is that the laws governing competitive bidding are often at the state level. Another is that municipal competitive bidding laws often appear outside codes of ethics (often because they are state mandated). But municipal contracting should be at the center of ethics concerns, because it is a relatively secret area where a great deal of wrongdoing and harm can occur.
As canaries were to mines, apologies are to a municipality's ethical environment. If you don't see a good number of sincere apologies, then ethics and accountability are probably dead in your town. In addition, insincere apologies are a sure sign that the town's political leaders are manipulative and trying to get something for nothing.
