Attorney General Looks at Local Ethics

In what appears to be an effort to bolster self-policing by local governments, the Associated Press reports that state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has asked the state’s 932 towns to provide his office with their ethics codes.  Similar requests will be made to the state’s counties, cities and villages.

General Municipal Law (GML) Article 18 requires local governments to adopt codes of ethics setting forth the standards of conduct reasonably expected of officers and employees, and to distribute these standards to all employees.

A March 2010 report by the Office of State Comptroller’s Division of Local Government & School Accountability looked at 31 local governments throughout the state, and found that “gaps exist in local officials’ awareness of and compliance with the provisions of their municipalities’ codes of ethics.”

The January 2011 report of the New York State Bar Association’s Task Force on Government Ethics also addressed local government ethics, calling GML Article 18 “both overbroad and underinclusive.”  The Task Force concluded that “[a] radical revision New York State’s municipalities is long overdue.”

The AP article says that the end result of the effort, led by Executive Deputy Attorney General Martin Mack, is to collect the information in 60 to 90 days and make it available to the public.

It is unclear whether this is part of the joint task force on public integrity that was established in May 2011 by Attorney General Schneiderman and State Comptroller DiNapoli.  However, the Attorney General’s request is likely to lead many of the state’s local governments to consider whether they are in compliance with GML Article 18, and whether their current ethics laws meet the needs and expectations of their constituents.