Jacksonville's Ethics Commission recently went through a two year revision process of their City's Ethics Code.
The resulting updates were finally ratified by the City Council last Tuesday night. See the Times Union article below... Note that I will get the code revisions up in a separate blog entry later.

Voter ID laws, which are being pushed by the Bush Administration and by Republicans at the state level, have an effect on municipal elections, as well. They are not only a federal and state problem.

I've just finished reading a book called <i>Illicit</I> by Moises Naim, about the trafficking of everything from people and drugs to artworks and counterfeit DVDs .

One of the things Naim focuses on is why governments have so much trouble putting a dent into any of these types of trafficking. The principal reason is the structure of relationships. Government bureaucracies lose out to increasingly flexible networks of individuals.

I also write <a href="http://northhaveninfo.blogspot.com&quot; />a blog relating to my town's government</a>.

Is there an ethical requirement to discuss matters that are not being discussed?

Dan Goleman, the author of <I>Emotional Intelligence</I>, refers to something he calls the Four Attentional Rules. 'In any group, from the family, to organizations, to entire societies, there are these unstated rules that we learn tacitly about the questions that can't be asked.'

<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/335">Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.</a>

Usually an ethics pledge is something required of a town official or something requested by a good government organization. But sometimes an ethics pledge is an election strategy.

This is the case in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where the state legislature's Government Administration and Elections co-chair Christopher Caruso and his Citizens for Real Change slate of candidates took an ethics pledge earlier this month.

My first experience with municipal politics in New Jersey, where I lived for nine years before moving to Connecticut, was accompanying some neighbors to a council meeting, because a couple of them wanted to speak about a change in zoning that affected the street we lived on. A neighbor asked the mayor when they could speak, and was told people would be alerted when it came time to speak. The council debated the issue and then, without a pause, started to vote on it. I rose in protest and had to insist, against people saying it was too late, that my neighbors be heard.

From <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Men_and_an_Elephant"><b>Wikipedia</b…;.

In an article published in the <a href="http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=48372">Jacksonville Daily Record</a> on Thursday, Carla Miller revealed her plans as the City's new Ethics Officer: <br><i>'In a very large city like Jacksonville you can't say that every single person who comes into government will be an ethical and honest person, so it comes down to the control systems.

From: http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=48985
Article published on: September 6, 2007
<b>by Max Marbut
Staff Writer</b>

Having an effective ethics program in any environment is all about enhancing communication.
That’s how Carla Miller, the City’s recently-appointed ethics officer, described her task at hand.