Municipal Ethics News and Views

More On Atlanta Councilman's Apparent Ethics Misstep

I know that many of you have been keeping up with the questions and concerns regarding Atlanta councilman Bond's decision to not recuse himself from discussions over the future of the jail there despite having been encouraged to do so (recuse himself) by the city ethics officer. (My post on it is here.)

For a very different but consonant perspective, here is a great piece ("Making A Gray Area Black and White") by Robert Weschler from cityethics.org. Highly recommended.

(In fact, if you don't follow Robert Weschler's blog, I'd strongly encourage it. For starters, as many of you know, my expertise is really on the 'business ethics' side of municipal ethics while his is on the municipal-specific side of the equation so he's able to provide a very different - and always highly informed - point of view. Plus, he's a great writer on topics that are almost certain to be of interest to anyone reading Municipal Ethics News and Views. Give his work a look if you haven't already!)

Ethics Misstep By Atlanta City Council Member?

Interesting quote from Atlanta city council member Michael Julian Bond in this piece from AJC.com ("Atlanta Councilman says he'll vote vote on deal despite possible conflict"). Apparently the councilman received an advisory opinion from the city's ethics officer, Ginny Looney, saying that while he could vote on an upcoming matter in which there was a question about a conflict of interest, that "If you want to be entirely safe on the conflicts issue, I would advise you to recuse yourself on the matter."

Councilman Bond's response is quoted as being, "I wasn't elected to look out for my relatives. I was elected to vote on the issues." 

On the surface, I am absolutely supportive of councilman Bond's comment. In fact, both parts of his statement are exemplary. Unfortunately, there is more here than the surface:

1.) Though an advisory opinion is just that - an opinion without the option of enforcement - why would one choose to ignore the advice of the city ethics officer? It would seem to signify an unfortunate disregard for ethics input. Might he have had a cogent explanation for his decision to not recuse himself? Maybe so but, at least as far as what is reported in this article, he makes no such cogent argument.

2.) Though, indeed, council members are elected to vote on issues, once one's vote is perceived as even potentially having been unduly influenced by either personal or professional relationships, the credibility of that vote is compromised. Just as in any setting, whether in the public sector or private, once your credibility is damaged, you will be forever swimming upstream to defend your opinion on not just the matter voted on but on any subsequent matters at all related to that vote.

One could reasonably argue that this isn't actually an ethics issue. After all, the ethics officer explicitly said that the ethics code would not be violated by the councilman's conversations and vote. My argument to the contrary, however, has two components. The first is, of course, the old saw that just because one can do something doesn't necessarily mean that one should. My second argument, though, is that by consciously and willfully compromising the appearance of one's ethics - as seems to have been the case here - one creates a de facto compromise in the public's trust of all subsequent decisions. Such an unapologetic violation of the public's trust, I would argue, is an ethics issue by definition. (Make no mistake, the argument is not that officials and employees should somehow avoid opinions or decisions that others mistrust or dislike - that comes with all positions of power or influence. Rather, the point is that those opinions and decisions need to be made 'cleanly' and without the appearance of undue influence.)

Here's to Ginny Looney for having apparently anticipated this problem and, on the other hand, here's a thumbs down to councilman Bond for not having heeded her advice. No matter how admirable or well-constructed his thinking on the council matter at hand - and I have no opinion on that either way - it is a shame that he has ignored seemingly well-reasoned ethics advice and compromised his constituency's ability to trust the wisdom of his vote.

Which Ethics & Values Training Topics Do Your City or Professional Association Need To Hear About?

I'm getting ready to put together some new ethics and values programs and would love your input on what I need to be talking about these days. (If you don't know what my current keynotes and seminars cover, you can find overviews of them here.)

What I'm looking for is simply this... What are the problems currently facing your municipality or local government professional association members that need to be addressed? I'll make it my job to see if/how my expertise could be used to address those problems. Any input will be appreciated. (Feel free to reply via email to me at chris (at) bauerethicsseminars.com.) Thanks!

I'm getting ready to put together some new ethics and values programs and would love your input on what I need to be talking about these days. (If you don't know what my current keynotes and seminars cover, you can find overviews of them here.)

What I'm looking for is simply this... What are the problems currently facing your municipality or local government professional association members that need to be addressed? I'll make it my job to see if/how my expertise could be used to address those problems. Any input will be appreciated. (Feel free to reply via email to me at chris (at) bauerethicsseminars.com.) Thanks!

Massachusetts Ethics Training Update: Some Well-Intentioned But Unfortunate Changes

If you follow this blog, you have already seen my prior comments regarding the uproar over the recently-instituted Massachusetts required ethics training. Yesterday, the Massachusetts Municipal League announced a summary of changes now made to that ethics testing requirement and the Massachusetts state ethics commission's own overview of the changes can be found here. (Of course, to clarify, what has been called the state "ethics testing requirement" really only pertains to a set of mandated reviews of their conflict of interest policies. As I have previously suggested, this mandated review falls squarely under the heading of 'necessary but not sufficient'...)

Given the persistent statewide uproar over the required policy reviews and testing, the commission has softened their stance on who must review the policy and be tested. As the policy in its original form seemed to be somewhat unwieldy and expensive for local municipalities, there's certainly no faulting the commission for making an effort to attend to local governments' concerns. In fact, such efforts should be commended. Unfortunately, the ways in which they have chosen to amend the policy seem to have taken an already-dubiously weak policy and now weakened it yet further.

Perhaps obviously, my biggest concern remains that this training continues to only attend to conflict of interest issues which, as important as they are, are but one drop in a very large bucket of ethics issues about which government officials and employees need to be trained. What's my beef with the training aside from the fact that it is overly-narrow in scope? A Power-Point review every two years and signing off on receipt of the policy is simply inadequate to assure that officials and employees really 'get' what is expected. They might or might not understand the rules after the mandated review but will this equip them to recognize and appropriately respond to less obvious ethical challenges on the job? I hardly think so.

The new weaknesses? According to the MMA story: "The new procedures also provide exemptions for employees who cannot comply with requirements because of limited English fluency or reading comprehension, special needs, and leaves of absence. Also exempted are vendors and contractors who provide one day or less of services per year."

1.) Limited English fluency, reading problems, special needs, and leaves of absence are hardly reasons for an employee to be excused from this already-minimal level of policy review! They are faced with exactly the same conflict of interest issues (as well as other ethical challenges) as every other official and employee. They certainly require some kind of accommodation to get the training done. However, it seems ludicrous to imagine that their circumstances somehow magically make them immune to the kinds of problems this training is presumably intended to reduce.

2.) I am unaware that vendors and contractors lose their ability to create a conflict of interest if given less than a full business day to do so. Perhaps having a dollars-of-business threshold might make more sense. Or, simply assure that every vendor and contractor sign off on their awareness and understanding of the policies. (That would still be extremely uncomfortably minimal but would, I hope, be better than nothing.)

I am also concerned that: "all municipal employees who are exempted from the online training requirements are also exempted from the requirement that they be provided with summaries of the conflict-of-interest law." If they are employees of any stripe, they need to know about the conflict of interest policies and their rationale. Consequently, if they are exempted from the online training, I would think that they would be exactly the ones to whom one would want to give a copy of the policies. Training it ain't but it would at least assure that they have some level of awareness of these essential rules.

Are there some positives? Absolutely. A provision for group training, for starters, is great. In fact, I hadn't even realized that this wasn't previously an option. Elaborating on who will be considered a "key employee" is also a welcome idea though I'll reserve some of my judgment on that until I see how, in fact, they will be defined.

The state should certainly be applauded for making an effort to create a more user-friendly and less costly ethics training mandate. My applause pretty much stops there, though. No matter how positive their intentions, it appears that the commission has taken an already all-too-weak training initiative and simply watered it down a whole lot further.