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Ethics Reform and Public Integrity: A New Report from the Center for Public Policy and Administration
Most people know what it means to be ethical, to be an honorable person that behaves according to what they believe is right. Trying to pin down what is right in every situation and what everyone can accept as right becomes a little more difficult. Ethics legislation is one way to set standards of ethical conduct by which public officials should operate.
Establishing clear and understandable standards of ethical behavior for public officials and lobbyists and creating mechanisms that impartially oversee ethical behavior improve confidence and transparency in the institution. The Center for Public Policy and Administration, at the University of Utah, released a new report on ethics reform on Wednesday.
Ethics reform legislation has had a difficult time passing in the Utah Legislature, but recent charges of ethics violations has stimulated renewed discussion. There are problems defining many of the concepts of ethics such as conflict of interest or ethics oversight and it is not easy setting what could be called arbitrary limits on gifts or who should oversee ethical conduct in the Legislature. Utah is not alone in grappling with ethics issues. The now infamous case of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska being convicted of violating federal ethics laws for not reporting thousands of dollars in gifts is the most well-known incident. Officials in Hawaii are investigating ethics violation of the State's procurement law by a state agency, and in Pennsylvania, 12 people have been charged with felonies for using public funds for conducting campaign work. In these and other states, the answer to ethics violations is the introduction of new ethics reform laws. These laws can be placed in four main categories: *conflicts of interest, gifts, financial disclosure, and ethics oversight*. This paper will examine these four categories (gifts and financial disclosure are subcategories of conflicts of interest), although there are many other areas of concern regarding ethical reform laws.
Jennifer Robinson, MPA
Center for Public Policy & Administration University of Utah
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