1D2-08-Write A Personal Code of Ethics for A Public Servant in Public Administration

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8 The Realpolitik of Ethics Codes: An Implementation Approach to Public Ethics politics and solve the that undermine the legitimacy of government (COGEL 1991; Chandler 1983). But ethics codes face a peculiar set of problems in their development and im 158 THE REALPOLITIK OF ETHICS CODES 159 plementation. They are deeply enmeshed in political and bureaucratic life and should not be considered as a separate and idealistic undertaking set apart from the realities of politics. The self-conscious injection of ethics into political life invites its own pathologies and abuses, which must be addressed in and implementing codes.

This chapter will discuss the development and implementation of the ethics code in King County, Washington, as an illustrative case study of problems inherent in adopting an ethics code in a local setting. The first section examines the politics of ethics and the paradoxical consequences of injecting "ethics" and institutionalized codes into political life. 2 The second section discusses the im plementation and reform of the ethics code in King County, Washington. The third section uses the King County case to suggest a managerial approach to implementing an ethics code. The Politics of Ethics A well-crafted and well-staffed ethics code can accomplish a number of vital public purposes. Broadly, the code can help restore and support public trust and the legitimacy of government. It accomplishes this purpose by limiting the abil ity of private power and interest to subvert fair access to government or the independent judgment of public officials. The codes and agencies also can pro vide forums of judgment where citizens can question practices which they be lieve violate the public trust and where concerned public officials can get guidance on complex issues.

As a corollary to these broad purposes, the codes must affect the daily lives of public officials. A good code and agency can buttress and support the indepen dence of government officials and provide direction and advice on complicated issues. The board and the code increase the resources available to managers and public officials to aid them with identification and clarification of issues and to help them resist blandishments and efforts to influence them from the outside.

Codes can also remove a number of temptations that might undermine good judgment or fair access. They can also regularize and professionalize relations with clients, vendors, and lobbyists.

A principled code can become a source of professional identity and a refer ence for individuals, rather than an imposition. A code succeeds best if it affects the agency culture and its standards become imbedded in bureaucratic practice.

Government officials can use the clear standards or prohibitions to protect them selves and professionalize relations with political actors and vendors, as well as to deflect attempts to influence them unduly.

If boards are understood by officials as a support for good management prac tice, managers and employees can use these boards for advisory opinions and to anticipate problems before they occur. Boards become the equivalent of the "ethics counselors" that some corporations have put in place to implement codes 160 J. PATRICK DOBEL (Dryvesteyn 1989). They give managers a way to get advice and support and they can remove the strains imposed on relations by the informal methods of lobbyists and vendors.

A well-designed code and a working board must be supported by ethics education and employee orientation, a good brochure and good literature, a visible staffing for the advisory function, and an investigative arm. Without these and without strong sanctions, they will be seen as paper tigers and will largely be ignored (Dryvesteyn 1989; COGEL 1991). In addition, if the code and board are seen primarily as investigative and punitive and only sporadically active in re sponse to crises or charges, they will lose the possibility of being seen as a neutral advisor on ethics issues. This will undercut the major strategy to internal ize the code in bureaucratic behavior.

As codes take effect, they change the way business is done, and can provide fairer access for vendors and stakeholders. help professionalize interper sonal relations and eliminate many incentives for informal inducements. New vendors who seek to sell to the government do not feel as much pressure to engage in corrupt or questionable practices at added cost to themselves. To the extent that postemployment practices are viable, vendors feel less pressure to hire for political reasons and can focus on competence and needs when they assess prospective employees.

But in the real world of politics, the codes will be used in ways not envisioned by their writers. They will encounter resistance and abuse as well as play an unanticipated role in shaping political rhetoric and debate. The structure of poli tics and codes all but guarantees that this will occur. The politics of ethics places significant constraints upon implementing and reforming a code.

In politics, multiple groups with disparate goals and resources pursue their goals within vague and sometimes legally defined rules of the game. These rules themselves are bound by procedures and are always changing on the basis of precedent or agreement. In government, agencies will pursue their own missions as well as attempt to protect their budgets and core technologies by forming alliances with other agencies and outside groups. These agencies will respond to the demands of their own leaders, the courts, the legislators, the media, and interested groups. At any point, most individuals and agencies are playingsev eral "games" at different levels of politics with many different actors (Bardach 1977; Lynn 1987; Long 1968).

Ethics codes and boards become one more set of constraints, but also one more set of rhetorical, legal, and institutional resources to use in political con flict. In addition, ethics codes sit astride several major nexus points of "games," which guarantee controversy. First, they break down barriers between private and public life, thus making personal aspects such as friendships, family, job seeking, and business interests subject, to public scrutiny and judgment. Second, they profoundly affect the borderline between agency and political life, espe cially at the point where agency officials build alliances they need to support THE REALPOLITIK OF ETHICS CODES 161 budgets and to gain outside support for initiatives. In this borderland, agencies contract for service, collect information, and find talent. Conversely, many ven dors and contractors use informal communications, meals, benefits, and hiring patterns to solidify relations with agencies. They also see agencies as good training grounds for potential talent. Finally, an ethics board that has staff and resources as well as an independent mandate to investigate will be viewed with alarm by both managers and employees. Both will fear the charges from the other side and see this forum of judgment and investigation as a threat to their autonomy and authority.

The genesis and structure of most codes aggravate these political tensions.

The vast majority of codes are created in response to scandal (COGEL 1991).

The codes are written hastily and with punitive intent, and they usually embody laundry lists of prohibitions to eliminate the most recent scandalous actions.

Over time, more scandals demand amendments to the codes, as well as glaring exceptions, which are usually demanded by the legislature and hurt their credi bility. Codes seldom possess a positive cast and almost never are designed in consultation with the managers who must run agencies. They traditionally focus on conflict-of-interest definitions and the attempt to insulate public officials from the influence of money, family, or business. They try to demarcate public and private life by limiting the giving and receiving of gifts and the use of govern ment property for gain or for personal use. More recently, they have attempted to solve revolving-door policies that tempt good judgment and create iron triangles.

Generally, the tone conveys a clear lack of trust and respect for public officials.

The codes reduce "ethics" to a negative prohibition on monetary and personal gain from private service, and enumerate long lists of minutia that now become ethics violations (Hays and Gleissner 1981). Most codes also are built around reporting and disclosure requirements, which make it possible for auditors or the media to identify hidden conflicts of interest by linking actions to revealed private interests. The failure to disclose properly or fully also becomes a viola tion of the code, and the disclosure forms become important information for the media. Ethics codes exemplify what Murray Edelman labels "symbolic reassurance." As laws, they reassure the public that the ethics problem has been solved because a law stands on the books. Usually, the code and its attendant offices remain underfunded because they have no real allies to defend their interests and many enemies. Even if it is irrelevant to practice, understaffed, and moribund, the code reassures the public. Consequently, codes often lapse due to budgetary or staff insufficiency, at least until the next ethics scandal (Edelman 1967).

Ethics legislation creates a matrix of rhetoric to define problems and goals.

Legislation becomes the legal, bureaucratic, political, and judicial resource of which political actors avail themselves. Once ethics becomes a resource and a subject for rhetoric it affects politics in profound ways. It now defines a set of new problems and issues that warrant government intervention and media scru 162 J. PATRICK DOBEL tiny. Claims of impropriety and corruption are nothing new in the political order; neither are character assassination and charges based on character issues. But the formalization of the rhetoric and codes adds a level of detail and breadth to rhetoric and charges. This rhetoric provides a convenient and relatively low-cost way to attack an adversary, either in electoral or policy debate. Politics .and integrity are narrowed to issues of conflict of interest and disclosure while fi nessing discussion of issues by subverting the credibility of the participants. The elevation of ethics at this level increases the temptations to what Alexander Bickel calls the politics of "moral assault." This pattern of political assault ig nores issues and focuses on personal attributes or a detail of an ethics code that delegitimizes the character and judgment of those involved. This form of politics often bypasses elections to achieve political purposes (Ginsberg and Schefter 1991). As codes acquire great detail or minutia that might be violated inadver tently, they increase their usefulness in moral assault.

Issues of character and conflict of interest always invite media scrutiny. Be cause of their nonideological but sometimes lurid content, ethics charges make good news and enable the media to perform a watchdog function without invest ing in discussion of issues. Disclosure forms are a mother lode for investigative reporting. Given the information in disclosure forms and the way ethics codes extend culpabHity to family members or to friendship patterns, the opportunity to uncover wrongdoing .or verify patterns suggestive of wrongdoing invites media intervention. In addition, the simple failure to report information adequately and in great detail now becomes a publicized "violation" in the press. Since much ethics legislation derives its urgency from a concern to maintain legitimacy of government, appearances matter profoundly. Consequently, investigations re vealing patterns, not just realities of conflict of interest, are legitimized.

This opening to scrutiny of friendship, financial matters, and family relations, as well as patterns of giftgiving and social life, is resented by many public officials and considered to be a form of harassment. Disclosure can discourage participation in public life and can generate tremendous resistance among gov ernment employees and officials. They do not see codes as an obligation due to their special status, but merely as a constraint and a harassment that private-sec tor employees do not face.

People's resistance and fear will solidify around these issues. Managers will ignore the provisions and signal subordinates not to take them seriously; unions will reinforce this hostility. This resentment will be doubled with the addition of postemployment limitations. Such rules are very difficult to enforce and can undermine legitimate career moves, especially at points of financial need. This becomes especially burdensome if the former employee possesses technical ex pertise in a special field and wants to stay in the same geographic area. It also hurts employees if they must report, a job search to their superior in order to protect themselves and the agency from conflict-of-interest charges.

For these reasons, many public managers view codes as problematic and set THE REALPOLITIK OF EHICS CODES 163 against effectiveness. These codes are not similar to professional codes of con duct. They do not presume special expertise and trust or internalized education or apprenticeship, and they have no self-enforcing mechanisms (Gortner 1991).

Rather, the codes are thrust upon the manager by legislators with little consulta tion or concern for management. The codes make dealing with vendors more awkward and difficult by stilting relationships and undercutting the informal dimensions necessary to make vendor relationships work. They make hiring and recruiting more difficult by specifying postemployment limits and by limiting the use of newly hired experts from companies in the area. The codes end some perquisites and such extras as gift giving, meals, and travel. Funds from vendors augmented limited government budgets and often helped education or morale efforts, for when training budgets were cut vendors could pick up the slack.

Codes add a layer of complexity in dealing with subordinates. And finally, the codes often seem intrusive and denigrating to public officials by their announced lack of trust and stringent regulation of private dealings.

This political world makes the implementing of a code very difficult. Suc cessful implementation and reform require a number of characteristics. Programs need experience and knowledge gained from other programs as well as trained cadres of leaders and committed individuals to implement them (Williams 1989; Levin and Ferman 1985). This enables competence in execution. In order to initiate change and reform, the programs also need either strong executive or legislative support, or strong outside support. Anyone will give the agency support during budget time and will ground some independence for the agency (Heymann 1987; Lynn 1987; Doig and Hargrove 1987).

The typical ethics code and agency possess none of the above characteristics.

Little is known about ethics codes, and few administrators pursue careers in ethics. Born in scandal with little long-term support, ethics agencies are per ceived as monitors of other agencies, and participation in them can cause prob lems on career paths (Downs 1976). Codes invite their pathologies while facing significant opposition. The story of the King County Ethics Code illustrates an approach to implementation of codes in this environment. The Ethics Code of King County, Washington The King County Code of Ethics had passed in the late sixties as part of a massive reform movement in King County.3 A series of major scandals and kickbacks had generated a new charter for the county and a general assault on the old-style corruption that had permeated the county. The code was seen as one aspect of this general reform and was aimed very narrowly at issues of conflict of interest.

The code was five single-space pages long; it began abruptly with a prohibi tion on the use of city-owned vehicles and property for one's personal use. The code then enumerated a long list of prohibited actions, all of which constituted a 164 J. PATRICK DOBEL conflict of interest. Almost all prohibitions dealt with having personal beneficial interests in firms doing business with the city in one's area of responsibility. A second section put limits on former commission members engaging in business with their old commissions. A third section required extensive financial disclo sure forms from all commission members, council members, and most senior county employees. The last section cited penalties for "negligent violation" and gave the ethics board power to investigate charges, hold hearings, and issue findings. Interestingly, the code did not specify to whom the findings were to be sent nor did it empower anyone to enforce the findings of the board.

The ethics board consisted of three members, each serving a three-year term.

One member was appointed by the executive, one by the council, and the chair was nominated by the other two members. All members had to be approved by the county council. The functions of the board and code were housed in the King County Records and Elections Office, since the code required the collection of the disclosure forms.

Soon after the code's creation, it fell into disuse. In its seventeen-year history, the board held only one major public hearing. Very few county employees knew of the code's existence. No line item existed in the budget for the code or the board, and all staffing was done on an ad hoc basis by the office of records and elections. The board met irregularly, usually once every three or four months, and held informal meetings in the office of the manager of records and elections.

No minutes were kept of meetings and staffing was intermittent. The board had processed an average of two advisory opinions a year for the last decade. The disclosure forms were regularly collected and filed, but they had never been internally audited. Once every three years, a state agency audited the disclosure forms to see if they were all accounted for. 4 In 1985, the board held its only major public hearing on an ethics violation and generated considerable media attention. As a result, in early 1986 a steady trickle of requests for advisory opinions began. At the same time, a new member joined the board. It now consisted of a senior attorney at a major Seattle law firm, an elected council member from a city in King County, and a recently appointed professor at the University of Washington. At the first meeting of the newly constituted board, the members asked the staff if any prior decision existed which might set precedents to help them deal with new requests. They discovered that six short letters that announced opinions constituted the entire record for seventeen years of existence.

The board continued to meet once in every several months to address the new requests. Almost one-third of the cases were dismissed when they were investi gated. They were found to be motivated by personal animus or political attempts to discredit the accused person. However, given the lack of staff, investigations took months; it took two months to get board decisions written and promulgated.

In mid-1986, the board received complaint about an individual who sat on the county Human Services Commission and also served on the board of an THE REALPOLITIK OF ETHICS CODES 165 agency that received funds from the commission. This commission decided on the location of centers for handicapped individuals. The same commission mem ber had tried to change the site of one center to make it more convenient for his child, who would live at the center. He was also a member of the organization that would run that particular center.

The board discovered that it had no procedures with which either to conduct an investigation or hold a formal hearing. It quickly invented ad hoc procedures to protect confidentiality, met with the director of records and elections, de manded that the staff attorney review all decisions, and asked for independent staff. Records and elections assigned a six-month temporary employee to staff the board and conduct the investigation.

The board assigned the temporary staff person to the investigation, but also asked her to begin collecting other codes of ethics since the board had reached the conclusion that its own code and status needed a radical change. The tempo rary staffer fell behind in writing and she mislaid affidavits from the investiga tion. The board members took over the writing of decisions and pressed the manager of records and elections for better staffing.

Next, the board received a request alleging a conflict of interest involving a citizen who had served on a citizen's advisory committee about open space. The letter alleged that this citizen had influenced the selection process and then bought the land and sold the development rights to the city. The board asked its staff attorney;a member of the prosecutor's office, to investigate this issue and discovered that a developer made the complaint. The complaint was being used to harass a citizen who was opposed to a development project. The board found no conflict of interest and became very sensitive to the abusive possibilities of the code.

In late 1986, the temporary employee left with all her records. The board could not find the affidavits for the investigation, nor could they find any of the collected files on other ethics codes. At the same time, an investigative reporter from a local newspaper approached the board to get disclosure forms of two staff members of the King County Council. None of the disclosure forms for the previous two years could be found; other forms were in disarray and were filed in nonsecured places.

A very experienced political operative with wide contacts in the executive office was employed by the board. She immediately centralized all the disclosure forms, reorganized them, and got work-study money to hire help to keep records up to date. Access to the files was restricted, and procedures for release were developed and passed by the board. The board and staff also developed proce dures to handles calls, complaints, and advisory requests. A new effort was initiated to collect and research other codes.

In December 1986, the board held a full hearing for the second time in its history. Since there was not enough money to hire a court recorder, the board taped the proceedings. Their lawyer devised an ad hoc set of rules, and the board 166 J. PATRICK DOBEL decided that a conflict of interest did exist in the matter of the person who had tried to influence the choice of site for a center for the handicapped. The ethics board advised the chair of the commission to require the commission member to excuse himself on all deliberations concerning his organization and his daughter.

The board issued the opinion but discovered it carried no weight. The chair of the commission, nonetheless, chose to act on the decision. This again convinced the board of the insufficiency of the existing code.

In early 1987, the chair of the board met with the manager of records and elections to ask her help with a budget for the board. The board believed there should be an educational program in its behalf and that a brochure would be sent to all city employees. They wanted a hotline and regular staffing to get decisions out faster and ensure a better turnaround time.

The board concluded that the code required an infrastructure of staff and education which neither King County nor most cities could support. In addition, upper-level staff needed ethics training. All new employees should have a bro chure and orientation. Employees and managers needed to be aware of the code and to be willing to come to the board for advising. Ideally, each division would write and implement, in consultation with the board, its own ethics guidelines.

The board had seen the abuses and the trauma of investigations, and they wanted to minimize punitive aspects and focus on being seen as a provider of services to managers and employees, rather than as an inquisitor.

The manager of records and elections agreed that they should seek to design a code and a board that would serve as a consultant and that this could be im plemented within the budgetary and political resources of the county. She pledged to increase staff and financial support but demanded that the board have regular meetings, ensure fast turnaround time, focus upon service instead of investigations, and write formal procedures. The board agreed and by the end of 1987 it had formalized procedures and reduced turnaround time to six weeks. In 1987, the staff and board consolidated and reorganized all the ethics board files and reconstructed lost opinions, and computerized the disclosure files.

During the last half of 1986 and the first three months of 1987, four major ethics scandals hit the local media. In the worst case, an employee of the county assessor's office bought a house from a seventy-five-year-old man he had met in his official capacity. Two months later the employee sold the house for 120 percent profit. None of the cases came before the ethics board, and the board, in deference to its own traditions, did not initiate investigations. However, the assessor was publicly attacked and ethics became a major issue in her election campaign. Later, a member of the county executive branch who planned to run for assessor pressured the board to intervene in the scandal in order to put the assessor on the defensive. The official threatened to undercut the board's budget request if it did not agree. The entire, board refused to get involved until the issue was brought before it. In early 1989, a new ethics code was proposed in the King .County Council. THE REALPOLITIK OF ETHICS CODES 167 The code had been drafted by the outgoing city attorney in anger at what he regarded as the increasing arrogance of lobbyists in the city. It contained strin gent limitations on lobbying and it tightened the existing code in a number of areas. The new code had been written without consulting any other officials in the government, including the ethics board.

After a flurry of publicity in which the newspapers mentioned the recent problems, the code was referred to staff for review. It quietly lay there for several months. Although the proposed code had serious flaws, the board de cided to exploit the opportunity the code and the scandals afforded. The board committed itself to pursue five revisions: First, the new code should have a strong preamble and a policy section that would enunciate a positive vision of public service and embody several principles that could guide decisions. Second, the code should cover all employees equally and not segregate council and executive or higher and lower levels. Third, the code should be reasonable and livable and should have a strong managerial and proscriptive component that would require county employees to identify potential conflict-of-interest issues and report them to their managers. Fourth, the code should cover some vital areas that were missed in the old code, such as the use of privileged information and tight limits on gifts, travel, and food from people seeking to do business with the county, as well as employment limits. Finally, the code should direct the board to make public findings that were reported to superiors and that became a cause for disciplinary action.

The board formed a working group with representatives of the prosecutor's office and the executive office. The group worked for two months to revise the new code. The board also incorporated the recommendations of the ombudsman into its revisions.

In its revisions, it sought a tough code, but one with limits the executive branch believed were compatible with good practice. This led to revisions of postemployment practices and an agreement to focus upon anticipating conflicts of interest and pushing supervisors to seek guidance. The board also recom mended that limits on outside employment apply only to top officials and fo cused the rest of the revisions on the issue of employment incompatible with official duties. In its discussions, the board realized that the lobbying provisions of the bill probably made it unpassable and pushed to have this aspect severed from the code proper. It submitted all its recommendations to the chair of the King County Council.

At the same time; the board secured a promise from the executive office and the manager of records and elections to support a full staff position for the board and a regular budget to support records and education. In a meeting with the chair of the board, the chair of the King County Council fully committed herself to the code and made it a top legislative priority for herself and the council's attorney. Throughout the process, her support kept the code on the agenda and made its passage likely. 168 J. PATRICK DOBEL The summer rush of legislation and budget slowed the code's track. In late August, the chair of the council, at the board's request, prodded the legislation.

Given political realities, the code was severed from the lobbying provisions, and the first draft was rather hastily written. It revised the old code rather than starting de novo. The draft incorporated many of the board's recommendations as well as ideas from the ombudsman and the county attorney's office, including the requirement that all county employees sign a receipt that they had received a summary of the code and that all were obligated to report violations.

This hybrid draft of the code went before the council in September. Several members opposed the "ratting" provision, which required employees to report violations. People were worried about the effect on morale and resistance from employees, given a requirement to inform on each other. One council member complained about the two-year ban on lobbying for ex-eouncil members.

The code was assigned to committee for refinement. At this point, the prosecutor's office entered the fray. The head of the civil division had read the council draft and became extremely agitated. He believed that giving the ethics board simultaneous investigative and judicial powers violated the separation of powers in the state constitution and had violated the advice given to the board by the prosecutor's office.

The revised draft separated the investigatory and judging functions. But the council refused to create a separate executive office of ethics that could investi gate the council itself; instead, they vested power with the ombudsman's office, which reported to the council. The council also added an extra investigator to give credibility to sanctions. Members believed strong sanctions were absolutely necessary to get managers and employees to seek advisory opinions.

The council subcommittee relaxed limits on gifts, travel, and food; in particu lar they exempted from such limits elected officials at ceremonial or informa tional meetings with constituents. The council believed that a different set of obligations was incurred by elected officials with their constituents. The "rat ting" provision was eliminated, but the code included an obligation to report potential conflicts of interest to supervisors. The council also relaxed the ban on going before old commissions and councils to a one-year wait, and added a provision that encouraged political participation by county employees.

At this point, a number of department directors reacted against the code. They objected to hiring limitations and to the restriction on food and travel paid for by vendors, and they feared the power of the ombudsman to harass them. Although they had known about the code for months and had seen drafts of it, no managers had contacted the board or the executive representative in the working group during deliberations. The directors wanted to rewrite the entire code but found themselves trapped by the momentum behind the process. It became clear that the council saw the code as all one piece where· the limits on gifts and on employment leveled the playing fields and undercut practices that united govern ment and vendors. The directors realized that they would be portrayed in the THE REALPOLITIK OF ETHICS CODES 169 press as individuals who were trying to protect their own perquisites. The execu tive finally asked for two weeks for "clarifying" amendments. In particular, the director negotiated a process to get an exception to the limitations on people who had recently been hired, and they permitted all officials appointed by and report ing to an elected official to attend meetings and receive travel or food.

In November 1990, the council unanimously passed the amendments and the code. Two weeks later, the council approved an extra investigator for the om budsman and a staff person for the board. This staff person would also help administer the county's new election-financing law.

Upon the passage of the law, the board received a flurry of often worried or angry requests that anticipated the new code and were brought on by the press coverage. Most of them sought advice on provisions that had been in the old code but which no one knew existed. One in particular came from a major developer who charged an employee reviewing his environmental impact state ment with a conflict of interest. The developer claimed her outside political activities and positions in support of controlled growth compromised her inde pendent judgment.

Many county employees viewed this as intimidation by developers and feared that other ethics charges would be brought against them for reasons of moral or political belief. In a divided vote, the board concluded that a deci sion to find a conflict would make all employees' personal political beliefs subject to public scrutiny and jUdgment. A narrowly defined judgment found no conflict and announced in clear terms that the code encouraged political participation.

The board began the task of hiring a new staffer, and the chair met with a number of management groups to explain the new code and to encourage manag ers to come to the board for advisory opinions. The board also worked to profes sionalize its operations and it developed a computerized system to track and file each request for an advisory opinion, created a consistent format for all deci sions, and distributed its decisions to top managers. The board initiated planning for a video presentation as part of orientation, and in cooperation with the per sonnel division it included an ethics presentation with each new orientation. A summary of the new code was mailed to all county employees with their last paycheck in February 1991, and they all had to sign a receipt for it. At the next stage, the board envisioned convincing the executive office to have each agency develop its own implementing standards for the ethics code. Meanwhile, the county unions balked at signing the receipt and many individuals returned the receipt unsigned on the advice of union leaders, who saw the code as a manage ment plot to iq.crease control over workers. A number of other managers contin ued to oppose the code and worked on plans for a midcourse correction package of amendments.

On March 31st, 1991, when the new code went into effect, the board was in place issuing decisions with staff and budget support. 170 J. PATRICK DOBEL Implementing a Code The King County case illustrates the predictable problems of implementing codes of ethics. No organized constituencies consistently support the code and boards. Public support for ethics issues is thin and largely latent and reactive.

Ethics seldom determines an election except as the result of a scandal. The changes were abetted by local scandals, and the need to reassure the public led to a short-term focus. At budget time, the board remains largely orphaned and its education program and staff are vulnerable. Few agencies or individuals find their own interests linked to the board; most agencies, officials, unions, and legislators have deep ambivalence if not outright hostility about boards and codes. Lobbyists and vendors who feel constricted by the code resent its limits on contact and on hiring practice. Consequently, the board remains powerless with little visibility, staffing, or influence. More troubling, individuals and offi cials are tempted to use the code for political gain, and organized groups, like developers, quickly realize that the provisions of the code can be used to harass public officials or citizens with whom they disagree.

The durable implementation of an ethics code, as with any program, requires strong and continuous support, either from the executive or the legislative branch. In reality, any successful ethics program requires the continuous support of the top executive (Dryvesteyn 1989; Matthews 1988). Most political execu tives, however, worry about ethics only after a scandal or if they succeed to office as a result of scandal and have made ethics an issue. Such support is uneven and seldom lasts through an administration, let alone across administra tions. Often ethics codes and agencies supported by legislatures are institutionalized as an extension of the monitoring and accountability functions of government.

Ethics agencies complement ombudsmen or inspectors general. The relatively large federal program owes much of its success to Congress' seeing it as a method to control and monitor accountability. Unfortunately, the transfer of money to ethics and inspectors general represents a movement away from func tional capacity in favor of monitoring (Light 1991). This approach is possible at the federal level and wealthier states, but most states and localities do not have the resources or incentives to pursue it.

The King County case represents a different approach built around the board's philosophy that ethics agencies and codes can be supportive of good management practice. This envisions ethics as inculcated into the agency cul tures in a manner that can endure political vicissitudes. It begins with executive support but must migrate to agencies to succeed. The agency and board would be seen as a resource to be used by managers, not as a control mechanism to be avoided. This becomes important because the forces needed to get an issue on the agenda and to get it passed often militate against its successful implementa tion (pressman and Wildavsky 1973). In King County, presenting the code and THE REALPOLITIK OF ETHICS CODES 171 board as· a consultancy to support management has the added advantage of matching the realistic resources, and it addresses the major sources of opposition.

These ideas are not about design of the code but are rather an approach to implementation with four components: a positive vision and consultation, inde pendence, visibility and relevance, and service. 172 J. PATRICK DOBEL The emphasis upon service and nonpunitive dimensions runs some risk that the code will be ignored if no scandals loom or if executive support seems weak.

This approach relies upon persuasion and on the offer to protect officials and support judgment. But indirectly, it builds on the incentive to avoid the costs of an uncovered media violation. Paradoxically, the strength of the new code's provisions and the presence of a respected investigator in the ombudsman's office give an element of credibility to enforcement that will make many em ployees and managers take the code more seriously than they would otherwise.

The possibility of sanctions motivates managers to take the advisory function more seriously as an alternative to complaints (Weller 1988). THE REALPOLITIK OF ETHICS CODES 173 program faces considerable resistance by top management and unions. Unpopu lar decisions that change the existing bureaucratic culture will amplify this hos tility. As the story illustrates and the politics of ethics predicts, this is to be expected. Ethics codes and legislation are enmeshed in politics. They are usually born in scandal and passed as much to reassure the public as to accomplish any good. They have little positive support, will be feared by many, and may be seen as a rhetorical and institutional resource by self-interested political actors. A working code and board need to be attuned to their political limits and realities. To think otherwise risks having the codes and boards either fall into desuetude or abuse.

Notes 174 J. PATRICK DOBEL Downs, Anthony. 1976. Inside Bureaucracy. Boston: Little, Brown.

Dryvesteyn, Kent. Vice President for Ethics, General Dynamics Corporation. 1989. Inter view with author. November.

Edelman, Murray. 1967. The Politics of Symbols. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Ginsberg, Benjamin, and Schefter, Martin. 1991.

Politics by Other Means. New York:

Basic Books.

Gortner, Harold F. 1991. Ethics for Public Managers. Westview, CT: Praeger.

Hays, Steven W., and Gleissner, Richard R. 1981. "Codes of Ethics in State Government:

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