Can independent and local government ethics commissions reduce political corruption? Journalist Gregg Fields interviews Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics Network Fellow Carla Miller about putting the heart back into government ethics training, and how a shift towards local government ethics initiatives may create an avenue for citizens to have an impact at the state level and beyond.

<p>Carla Miller was interviewed by Gregg Fields for a labcast recently. Here's the description from the Ethics Lab website:</p>

<blockquote>Can independent and local government ethics commissions reduce political corruption? Journalist Gregg Fields interviews Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics Network Fellow Carla Miller about putting the heart back into government ethics training, and how a shift towards local government ethics initiatives may create an avenue for citizens to have an impact at the state level and beyond.</blockquote>

A recent action by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
against the city of Harvey, IL, a poor city of 30,000 just south of
Chicago, deals with a different sort of fiduciary duty than the
usual government ethics case. In a complaint dated June 24, 2014
(attached; see below), the SEC alleges that the city's comptroller
acted as financial adviser in three bond issues for a hotel development, diverted some of the funds to himself, and also diverted
funds to the city's general fund. The comptroller is acting as

<br><br>One of the most important figures in local government ethics passed
away last week at the young age of 61, after a relapse of ovarian
cancer. Virginia "Ginny" Looney was Atlanta's first Ethics Officer.
She was appointed by Mayor Shirley Franklin, who conceived and
pushed through the ethics program back in 2002. <br>
<br>
Ginny helped turn Franklin's ideas and an inadequate ethics code
into an excellent ethics program. She held the ground against

It's the end of an era. Last week, according to <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-rahm-emanuel-shak…; target="”_blank”">an
article in the Chicago <i>Tribune</i></a><i>,</i> a federal
magistrate declared that Chicago was released from the 1972 Shakman
consent decree, which was supposed to end patronage (for a long

The Washington state Legislative Ethics Board has been discussing
how many meals a state legislator should be able to accept from
lobbyists and lobbyist-employers under the "infrequent" meals
exception in the state ethics code. The exception allows legislators
to accept food and beverage when their attendance is "related to the
performance of official duties" on "infrequent occasions." The board
has apparently never defined "infrequent."<br>
<br>

An individual who was asking me government ethics questions
recently became angry when I said that codes of conduct that go
beyond conflicts of interest are outside of my field. He said that
those who engage in bad conduct will probably also engage in bad
ethics. He referred to my exclusive focus on conflicts of interest
as "compartmentalization."<br>
<br>
This reminded me how important it is to make it clear why government
ethics programs deal exclusively with conflicts of interests and

<h4>Old soft money was associated with <i>access</i>, like a wad of
cash that you’d slip to a nightclub bouncer to get in the
door. The new soft money is more like a bulge in one’s jacket
pocket, an implied <em>threat</em> against those who refuse to
comply.</h4><br>
—Dan Tokaji and Renata Strause in <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=62486&quot; target="”_blank”">an Election Law Blog

The portrayal of lobbying state and, hopefully, a few local officials will
soon be in the hands of Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning
author of <i>The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11</i>
and, most recently, <i>Going Clear:
Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief</i>.<br>
<br>

In 2012, Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown signed a People's Pledge
in their U.S. senatorial race in Massachusetts. The candidates
agreed to donate to a charity of the other candidate's choice a sum
equal to 50% of any advertisement run by any outside group or PAC.
The goal was to let the candidates control their own race and to
prevent outside groups from changing the nature of the race,
especially by running negative ads, as they tend to do. The pledge was successful