Municipal Ethics News and Views

For Whom Bell City Tolls

The scandal in Bell City, California has plenty of folks up in arms as it should. Yet I have been struck by the odd distribution of reactions. Primary has seemed to be the understandable citizen outrage in and near Bell City. Next has been the political outcry near there. The next two strongest reactions have seemed to come from citizens and politicians in an ever-diminishing degree as one move progressively further away geographically from Bell City.

Now, all of the above makes perfectly reasonable sense and is essentially what one would expect. Here is what I didn't expect, though... Almost nowhere have I seen either loud or persistent responses calling for efforts to build stronger ethics in local governments as a reaction to what happened in Bell City. For the most part, the closest I have seen is a rabid rush to examine previously unseen city salaries and expenses to root out any remaining pockets of fiscal abuse. That's fine and such witch hunts can be helpful if, in fact, any witches are actually found and the innocent are truly, fully protected in the process. However, simply applying this narrow lens to local government ethics misses several essential ingrediants of building better ethics in those governments.

What is needed? It's a long list but hovering near the top are:

• a proactive rather than reactive approach to local government ethics. Let's finally get focused on preventing ethics problems rather than simply cleaning up after them!

• the development of effective ethics committees and commissions at a local level. These need to not be either unduly or inappropriately aggressive but absolutely not rubber-stampers. In other words, they need to be more than token appointments, well trained, and given the authority to fully carry out their duties.

• the development and implementation of effective ethics and values training for all local government officials and employees so that there are fewer chances for inappropriate behavior to go unnoticed or without an appropriate response.

So, how has the Bell City situation 'tolled' for you and your local government? Did it simply anger you or will you use it as both personal and organizational leverage for putting an effective ethics and values training initiative for your local government into appropriately high gear?

 

When Is Municipal Ethics Training Not Really Ethics Training?

When is ethics training for municipal officials and employees not really ethics training? All the time, it seems...

It is amazes me how often municipal ethics training programs are trotted out only to find that they fall into one (or more) of three barely-even-marginal categories:

• Programs that only review the rules. There are obviously lots of rules and every municipal official and employee needs to know them. However, reviewing the rules, in itself, is hardly ethics training. Folks need to know how to put the rules into practice, how to easily spot problems and potential problems in themselves and others, and what to do when they see those problems and potential problems. Simply knowing the rules doesn't help them learn those essential skills and yet it's exactly a lack of those skills that causes far more ethics problems than does a lack of knowing the rules. 

• Programs that don't discuss the values and principles the rules are there to reinforce. If employees don't understand the values and principles on which the rules are based, then how are they going to know how best to apply the rules? More importantly - and my audiences sometimes get tired of my repeating this - if you're going to expect people to act ethically, they better have a pretty good idea of what to do when there isn't a rule for something! Frankly, I have no idea how to make that happen without talking at least as much about values as the rules.

• Programs, regardless of what they cover, that simply provide a written or PowerPoint-driven review followed by a canned test. Might that be a useful approach to giving folks a basic overview or reminder of a few simple things? Sure. But let's not fool ourselves - that type of 'training' is really better at meeting risk management oversight objectives than anything else (i.e. "It's not our fault! That employee was required to review that material and pass a ten point test on it every single year!"). Please... If you want officials and employees to really 'get' ethics, you'd better use a training program that allows them to actively discuss the real-world issues they face and to problem-solve around any barriers they see to making good on their ethical and legal mandates.

In my experience, far too many city and state governments are entrenched in using these three substantially sub-par approaches. In fact, they are so used to them that they actually ask for them when presented with an alternative. When I say that I do programs that are largely interactive and that I do far more than just review the rules, these types often look puzzled or annoyed. To them, doing more than the bare minimum feels either unnecessary or somehow inefficient. The fallout from those attitudes shows up in the countless needless and costly municipal ethics problems we read about every single day. In time, far more municipalities need to understand that not only is ethics training necessary but that it needs to actually be ethics training in more than just name alone.