Case study Needed Ethics or Manners for Elected Officials Could the impolite behavior of an elected ...........

 Needed: Ethics or Manners for Elected Officials?

Could the impolite behavior of an elected official while conducting a meeting be an ethical matter? Or could it be a matter of bad manners? Here are several instances.

Dateline: a small community in Central Florida - After concluding all the official business on the weekly city commission meeting agenda, the mayor, a down-town businessman, issued a personal complaint that some business owners were allowing their employees to park directly in front of their businesses. The mayor mated for thirty minutes with no one to gavel him clown because he held the gavel and in the course of the ranting referred to downtown business people who take up customer parking as "nit wits, idiots, and *#@ kissing cousins."

Two commission members took offense at the mayor''s tirade and chastised him, albeit politely. The Chamber of Commerce made the incident a cause celebre, and there was much letter writing referring to the collective embarrassment of the incident. One offended commissioner requested that staff develop a code of conduct for adoption at the next city commission meeting—and he didn''t mean Robert''s Rules of Order or the state''s ethics statutes. Rather, he talked about a code that would speak to an elected official''s professional behavior, civility, and common courtesy.

Dateline: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - It''s a pack of lies!" shouted the council president at the personnel director. The four hour meeting over how to pay for a study on whether women and minorities working for the city are paid fairly ended badly. The personnel director was

incensed by the accusation and walked out of the meeting. A fellow council member bemoaned a "lack of civility."

Discussion Questions

1. What would you do if you were the staff person given the assignment to draft a code of conduct for elected officials?

2. Considering the recent case of a Punjab minister abusing his colleague in the assembly ,do you think we need a code of conduct for law makers in India?

3. Do codes address these kinds of issues?

4. Or do we simply have a case of an ill-mannered mayor who needs an injection of common sense and civility?

5. In the Pittsburgh case, would you have walked out of the council meeting? If not, what would you have done?

By: Mona Kaushal