Tag Archives: ethics

Paying for Secrecy

Indiana doesn’t have money for adequate infrastructure repair and maintenance, or for preschool for at-risk children, or …well, you know the drill. There are all sorts of things normal citizens expect their state government to do only to be told by our elected overlords that the money isn’t there.

But there’s always enough money to pay the lawyers to defend our lawmakers’ misplaced priorities or ethically indefensible actions.

Did Indiana’s Governor refuse to resettle Syrian refugees, despite the fact that under long-settled law, he doesn’t have the legal authority to make that decision? Let’s have the Attorney General defend him in the inevitable lawsuit, and then appeal the (equally inevitable) adverse verdict.

Is the Environmental Protection Agency trying to bring 19th Century environmental policies into compliance with the realities of 21st Century problems? Sue the EPA and insist that Indiana won’t go along.

And don’t get me started on the entirely  voluntary participation of Indiana in several culture war lawsuits aimed at derailing equal rights for LGBT Americans. We do like to keep our AG busy!

Most recently, we learn from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette (not from the Indianapolis Star, which is too busy reporting on the “beer beat” and obsessing over the broom guy to cover city or state government) that

Hoosier taxpayers have paid $160,000 in legal fees to shield Indiana House and Senate communications from public view in just eight months.

The final tab will be higher because the most recent tally from the Indiana Auditor’s Office doesn’t include a bill covering the March 17 oral argument before the Indiana Supreme Court.

“That’s a lot of money,” said Kerwin Olson, executive director of the Citizens Action Coalition. “It would have been a lot cheaper just to honor the public records law.”

“Follow the money” is a time-honored mantra that can mean many things. But one thing it almost always means is that people allocate resources based upon their actual priorities.

Indiana may not “have money” for preschool, or road repair, or environmental protection, but we seem to have unlimited resources to protect the perquisites of the powerful…

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I Don’t Think D- Is A Good Grade…

Here in Hoosierland, we like to grade stuff. Well, some stuff.

We assign grades to public schools despite the dubious nature of some of the criteria used. We are less enthusiastic about the grades given to our infrastructure by the Corp of Civil Engineers, although we’ve seen some grudging acknowledgment of those scores, given that our crumbling roads and bridges are hard to hide or ignore. (A former student tells me that a big chunk of the bridge from I70 into downtown Indy just fell off yesterday…)

Then there’s a grade I’m betting we won’t hear very much about: the grade for ethical government, awarded by the Center for Public Integrity. Indiana got a D-. (If you click through, you can see the scoring criteria, and the categories.

You may recall lawmakers’ promise to make ethics reform the centerpiece of the last session :

During the 2014 legislative session, a top Republican House leader, Rep. Eric Turner, privately lobbied his fellow Republicans — who control both chambers — to scuttle a proposed ban on nursing home construction that would have hurt his family’s business. A House investigation cleared him of wrongdoing, but he was later stripped of leadership roles and stepped down after being re-elected. Department of Transportation official Troy Woodruff took advantage of an ethics law loophole that allowed him to skirt a one-year cooling-off period and become an independent contractor for an Indianapolis firm he’d regulated. And former state education superintendent Tony Bennett only had to pay a $5,000 fine for questionable campaign practices, including the use of state staff and computers, even though the state’s inspector general condemned his actions as wire fraud and misuse of state resources. Bennett wasn’t charged.

Ultimately, legislators approved an ethics reform law, effective in July. But even during the reform debate, two lawmakers floated proposals that drew conflict of interest charges and sharp criticism.

To be blunt, the vaunted “reforms” were more atmospheric than effective. Indiana earned F’s in numerous categories, including public access to information, political financing, state budget process, judicial accountability, ethics entities and civil service oversight. The only B’s were earned by the state pension systems (B+) and internal auditing practices (B-).

Ironically, Indiana’s score was better in 2012. Before “reform,” we earned a C-.

Knowledgable observers cite many reasons we consistently  fail to clean up our act: lax enforcement of guidelines, a culture of quid pro quo, and most of all, a gerrymandered state where 80% of the legislative seats are uncompetitive, making it highly unlikely that unethical behavior will be punished at the ballot box.

That’s what happens when lawmakers choose their voters, rather than the other way around….

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Deplorable Hoosier Ethics

Same old, same old.

The headline on a recent editorial from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette pretty well sums it up– State Sinks Further into Ethics Morass. 

The editorial asked the 64-Thousand-Dollar question: “How low will the bar have to slip before Indiana lawmakers finally demand tougher ethics laws?”

Troy Woodruff and Inspector General David Thomas have lowered it another notch. Woodruff, the former chief of staff for the Indiana Department of Transportation, won’t face criminal or civil charges related to state land deals benefiting his own family members, thanks to a ruling from Thomas.

The inspector general simply concluded Woodruff’s conduct “gives rise to the appearance of impropriety” and “diminishes public trust.”

And how.

Woodruff’s “appearance of impropriety” (it appeared improper because it was improper) is just the latest in a sorry string of episodes in which Indiana elected and appointed officials have abused the public trust, using their positions to enrich themselves or their families.

A couple of years ago, it was Eric Turner, twisting arms behind the scenes to protect his family’s lucrative nursing home business; more recently, an employee of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles negotiated a cushy contract between the Bureau and a private vendor, and then–what a coincidence!–left the BMV for a high-level job with that vendor. (After the BMV story became front-page news, Governor Pence cancelled the contract and ordered an “ethics investigation” of the transaction. I think this is what is meant by “locking the barn door after the horse is stolen…”)

Rep. Robert Behning, who chairs the House Education Committee, formed an education lobbying company. The House Ethics Committee is “looking into” whether or not he violated the rules.

Even Indiana’s Inspector General– who seems more interested in downplaying and minimizing ethics violations than punishing them– found former Secretary of Education Tony Bennett in violation of the state ethics code.

In Woodruff’s case, as the Journal Gazette reported,

After Woodruff’s legislative defeat, he and his wife both were awarded state jobs. His mother also was hired by INDOT. His wife remains a highway department employee; Troy Woodruff left last week to go into business for himself – taking with him with years of taxpayer-supported job-training and invaluable state connections.

Statehouse observers have long whispered that the violations that get reported are just the tip of the iceberg–that backscratching and conflicts of interest are widely accepted as the way business is done in Indiana government. They note that with the exodus of experienced statehouse reporters and the diminished news coverage of state government, only the most rash and egregious behavior ever gets reported.

I’ll give the last word to the Journal Gazette.

Lawmakers ignore the repeated absolution of ethical lapses at their own risk. Voters can’t continue to overlook conflicts allowing lawmakers’ friends and allies to grow richer even as their own communities suffer from dwindling state support. They eventually will cry foul over the Statehouse’s low ethical threshold.

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A Question of Trust

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has introduced a bill that would require the Supreme Court to develop a code of ethics. (Surprising at it may seem, the high court does not have such a code, although all other courts do.)

The bill was prompted by several recent controversies over judicial recusal, especially a number of cases in which Scalia–who has grown more voluble and intemperate over the years– has spoken publicly on the merits of cases that were highly likely to come before the Court (historically, and under existing codes of ethics, a judicial no-no) and then refused to recuse himself when the cases were argued.

There has also been considerable criticism of Justice Thomas, who has failed to recuse himself in cases where his wife has a clear interest in the result. Justice Kagan has been criticized for sitting on cases in which she was involved to some extent as Solicitor General.

As a scholar of constitutional courts noted on a listserv the other day, “the US is still rare in the world in making recusal of a judge a matter for the personal decision of that judge, without any way to contest it.  In the German Federal Constitutional Court, for example, the decision to remove a judge from a particular case is made by the rest of the judges in that Senate with the judge in question not participating.    We should have some comparable process here.”

Codes of ethics are about more than recusal, of course. They are centered on avoiding even the appearance of impropriety, in recognition that the legitimacy of public institutions and especially the Courts is dependent upon public trust.

Ethics codes typically limit the value of gifts that may be accepted, or forbid their acceptance at all. That includes junkets, generously paid speaking engagements, and other activities or favors that might produce bias. And most codes of ethics require a measure of disclosure significantly greater than is current Court practice.

In a government based on separation of powers, the legislature may lack the authority to tell the Court to clean up its act–and the Court gets the final word on that issue. In a Court as ideologically divided as this one, I suppose decisions about recusal could themselves become politicized. The GOP’s Tea Party wing will probably oppose Murphy’s bill, since most of the shenanigans these days are by conservative jurists. So passage of this measure is hardly a slam-dunk.

That said, it really is indefensible that the Supreme Court exempts itself from ethical principles that apply to other judicial and administrative entities. Even Congress has a Code of Ethics, however honored in the breach it may be.

When Justice Scalia goes duck hunting with a litigant (Dick Cheney) whose case is then pending before the Court; when Thomas sits on a case despite the fact that his wife’s organization is an interested party, I think skepticism about their ability to render a dispassionate verdict is understandable–and foreseeable.

Such behavior erodes the public trust, and it greatly diminishes the stature of the Court.

There is a reason Courts should be–and be seen to be–incorruptable. They are, after all, in the business of disappointing litigants; every time someone wins, someone else loses. If credible charges of favoritism or bias can be leveled, even if untrue, citizens ultimately lose respect for the rule of law.

Judges–especially Supreme Court Justices– used to take great pains to avoid the slightest appearance of impropriety; they used to aspire to be “as pure as the driven snow.” Lately (as Mae West memorably put it), they’ve drifted.

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Why Cynicism is Growing

I’ve been distressed by the growing cynicism of the students I teach–a cynicism about the motives of those in business and public life that has seemed to grow over the past few years. There have always been a few who sneered that “public service” was an oxymoron, who believed that given the chance, everyone would demonstrate greed and disregard for others, but most students were more charitable in their judgments.

Still, as I detailed in my book “Distrust, American Style,” we’ve seen a lot of corrupt institutional behavior over the past couple of decades. Enron, WorldCon, the various scandals in major-league sports, the Catholic Church’s cover-up to protect pedophile priests, the Bush Administration’s assaults on civil liberties and its dishonest case for war in Iraq–there has been plenty of reason for cynicism and distrust. While I’m sure similar examples have existed throughout our history,  the growth of Facebook and Twitter and blogs has brought news of the misbehavior to many more people than might previously have known what was going on.

Student cynicism began to grow more pronounced around the time we headed into the Great Recession, as the public learned much more about the behaviors and compensation levels of the “banksters.” (Rhymes with gangsters….). The widely publicized emergence of SuperPacs funded by corporations intent upon protecting  favorable tax rates and corporate welfare hasn’t helped.

This morning’s news provides two examples, noteworthy only because they’ve become utterly commonplace.

The first example–Brian Bosma’s appointment of a lobbyist with his law firm as parliamentarian–prompted this editorial language from the Indianapolis Star:

Whetstone is coming back to work for Speaker Brian Bosma as the House parliamentarian, even though he will continue to work with the lobbying firm of Krieg DeVault LLP. Whetstone has pledged not to lobby the legislature during his employment as parliamentarian, a job that pays $12,000 a month through the legislative sesion.

Whetstone says Krieg DeVault holds itself to the highest ethical standards. Even so, there’s a conflict of interest, or at least the appearance of one. As parliamentarian, Whetstone will advise the House Speaker on rules challenges and other procedural questions that arise. What happens if he’s asked to weigh in on a challenge that would affect legislation supported by one of his former clients, or by clients of other lobbyists working for Krieg DeVault?

The second was a report that the executives who took Hostess into bankruptcy and blamed that decision on “greedy unions” unwilling to take yet another round of pay cuts even while those executives tripled their own compensation have petitioned the bankruptcy court to approve the payment of their bonuses as part of the court-supervised demise of the business. (There’s a yiddish word for this: chutzpah.)

When the daily news consists of little but reports of self-dealing and ethical obtuseness, of evidence that politicians continue to put special interests above the national interest, how can I fault the students who assume that the whole world works that way?

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