In Isle La Motte, Vermont, according to <a href="http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070319/… recent article in the Burlington <i>Free Press</a>,</i> the longtime town clerk and treasurer diverted $100,000 of town funds to her own use.

Rushworth Kidder's 2005 book <i>Moral Courage</i> is something all municipal officials should read. It's not only a good introduction to ethics, but it focuses on the quality that is most important to create and maintain an ethical environment in any organization, and especially in governments. But since you probably won't read the book, here are a few of Kidder's points that will most profit municipal officials.

Early on, I did <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/116">a blog entry on apology</a>. I even included apology in <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/mc/full#TOC60">107(1) of the Model Ethics Code</a>, as a stated option for officials, so that their municipality does not have to go to the trouble of investigating their actions and holding hearings.

Personal interest vs. public interest is central to government ethics. We tend to think, however, that it's central to them (officials) not to us (citizens), and that we have nothing to learn from this sort of ethics. 

Well, we're wrong. 

Buried in <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/254">my blog entry on the Louisiana legislators' attempt to undermine recusal on constitutional grounds</a> is a short discussion of what I refer to as 'the public-interested side' of recusal. I would like to talk a little more about this, because I think the failure to discuss it enough is a serious problem.

Before I got around to putting up a blog entry on the ethics mess in Louisiana, it took a turn for the worse. What started as two legislators protecting the jobs, respectively, of their father and their brother, has turned into a full-fledged constitutional battle that could undermine the concept of recusal for conflicts of interest nationwide.

No, the class exception does not except classy people from ethics codes. It excepts people from recusing themselves when the interests they have that would be affected by an act or decision are similar to a broad class of people. The biggest class is, of course, taxpayers. Municipal officials can vote for budgets even though their taxes are affected by it. Other classes excepted without controversy include homeowners, renters, members of a pension plan, and business owners.

No Retreat, No Surrender: One Man's Fight.' If only this were the title of a civil rights leader's memoir. But no civil rights leader would talk about 'one' man's fight; it was a group effort. Only someone who falsely sees himself as walking into a sunset alone after a gunfight would use that subtitle for his memoir.

The memoir is Tom DeLay's. It is a title chosen by someone who sees himself as an unrepentant victim.

The <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/mc/full">City Ethics Model Ethics Code</a> includes as an aspirational code the American Society for Professional Administration's (ASPA) Code of Ethics. This is highly unusual, but not unprecedented. One precedent is the Georgia Municipal Association's City of Ethics program, developed in 1999.

<p><img lign="left" src="files/Top10.gif" /> We have selected what we consider takes the cake for 2006 in terms of Ethics Issues covered by the media... </p>

<h2>Number Ten ' Iraq Oversight ' An under-reported sleeper with potential</h2>