Dan Ariely, an economist at M.I.T., made up a test that is easy to cheat on, in order to see how social situations might affect students’ choices whether to actually cheat or not. As described in his new book, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Hidden-Forces-Decisions/dp…; target="_blank">Predictably Irrational</a></i>, he found that students who had been asked to recall the Ten Commandments did not cheat at all.

Strong ethics rules for elected officials are needed <i>not</i> because politicians are especially corrupt or corruptible. They are needed because these leaders are just like the rest of us – human beings who have failings, weaknesses and flaws. ... We elect politicians in the hope that they will pursue for the benefit of the rest of us a course of wisdom and fairness. Our democracy is based on a “hope,” if you will, that our elected representatives will do their utmost to set aside the normal instinct for selfishness and instead will search for the common good.

There is an assumption held by people involved in government ethics that putting one’s personal interests ahead of the public interest is bad, that a healthy democracy depends on government officials working for the public interest rather than for themselves.

But not everyone holds this view. In fact, the prevalence of the opposite view provides a great deal of support to unethical conduct, especially at the local government level.

How harmful can it be for a potential contractor to give money to the favored charities of someone who oversees a county’s finances? And how harmful can it be for a county official to work with people he trusts, rather than competitively bidding out the county’s business?

The answer to both questions, given by the disaster that's hit Jefferson County, Alabama, home to the city of Birmingham, is a lot.

Ethics problems in Louisiana have shown up in this blog several times, so it’s heartening to be able to report that Louisiana is now putting into law a series of ethics improvements, some of which apply to local governments. For example, <a href="http://www.gov.louisiana.gov/index.cfm?md=newsroom&tmp=detail&articleID… week Gov.

“Ethics” is an unfortunate name for what appears in government ethics codes. When people think about ethics, they think about right and wrong, about moral obligations, about being honest and upright, about the Golden Rule.

This isn’t what government ethics deals with. Government ethics deals with a limited area of conduct: conflicts of interest. And most people don’t realize this, or understand conflicts of interest.

The ethics rules of the Minnesota State Senate limit conflicts of interest to instances where a bill would provide a financial benefit to a senator or his or her employer that is not shared by other similarly situated individuals or firms. This is a common standard.

If anyone questions the value of advice regarding municipal ethics issues, look at these statistics from the Atlanta Ethics Office.

66% of ethics complaints filed in 2007 alleged use of city property.
3% of the requests for advice in 2007 involved use of city property.

If only people would ask. At least, Atlanta has an Ethics Officer to ask.

Campaign finance is an area of municipal ethics that is often treated as a separate field entirely. But they’re closely related. Both involve the conflict between private and public interest, and especially gifts to elected officials. The principal difference is that campaign contributions are a perfectly legal way of giving to elected officials, which makes the problem a bit more complex.

<b>See 1/16/09 addendum at bottom</b>

The dream of every machine politician is to have his city controlled by those who work for him. Unfortunately, every city has citizens who don’t work for the city administration. Or so I thought until I learned about Vernon, California.

Vernon is “an exclusively industrial city,” which is a fancy term for one big conflict of interest.