Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. For
those too young to remember, President Nixon's re-election campaign
had people break in to the Democratic National Committee's offices
in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.<br>
<br>
According to <a href="http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20120617/EDIT07/306179972/1021/ED…; target="”_blank”">an

<p><a href="http://www.cityethics.org">City Ethics</a> president,
Carla Miller, worked with <a href="http://www.integrityfl.org/">Integrity

Possibly the most important single thing in government ethics is the
recognition that just because something isn't required, it doesn't
mean you can't do it, and that just because something is not
expressly prohibited, it doesn't mean you <i>can</i> do it. This is an
expanded version of what I've often talked about:  that, unlike most laws, ethics
laws are minimum requirements.<br>
<br>
I really like it, for example, when, even though the law does not require

Erosion of an ethics program can occur in many ways (see <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/files/lgep1-0%20-%20Robert%20Wechsler.htm#Bac…; target="”_blank”">the

According to <a href="http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/06/12/47352.htm&quot; target="”_blank”">Courthouse

One of the things that always fascinates me is that, while politicians have no problem asking experts legal, financial,
engineering, or human resource questions, they feel they know what
they need to know about government ethics questions.<br>
<br>
Take D.C. council member Vincent Orange. According to <a href="http://wamu.org/news/12/06/11/orange_proposes_dc_income_tax_exemption_f…; target="”_blank”">an

Despite writing this blog for six years, I keep finding
important areas of government ethics that I have not discussed. One
such area involves dealing with the possible conflicts of outside auditors. Large cities and counties
have internal auditors or comptrollers, but most local governments
employ the services of external auditing firms, just as companies do.
These auditors have special duties toward their clients, that is, to
the community, not to the individuals who hire them and with whom

In recent years, Florida's elected officials have shown a great deal
of leadership in the field of unethical and criminal misconduct. The
state has a weak state ethics commission, which has jurisdiction
over local officials, and until recently only one good local
government ethics program, in Miami/Dade County (Jacksonville and
Palm Beach County joined this list with ethics reform last year).
The major voices in government ethics in Florida have, sadly, been
grand juries.<br>
<br>

<h4>"Trying to protect public officials from warrantless ethics
complaints is a fruitless task; there will always be some who make
outrageous claims about the behavior of those at city hall.<br>
<br>
"Hiding such complaints from the public view, however, will not
make them go away. It’s better for the public to learn who is
crying wolf — along with those who have discovered a fox in the
henhouse — than to shield such things under the cloak of secrecy
and the notion of protecting reputations."</h4>

I recently read Judith N. Shklar's book <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=vfqbGgwEIQkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=fa…; target="”_blank”"><i>The Faces of Injustice</i></a> (Yale U.P., 1990). This excellent essay
about the difference between misfortune and injustice would not