A Thoughtful Response to a Past Blog Exchange: Is the "Stick" of Regulation Preferable to a Disclosure Scheme?
This week, CityEthics.org analyzed a past exchange that occurred between Common Cause Georgia and the Pay to Play Law Blog that centered on our competing views as to the most effective means of ensuring public confidence in a workable scheme to prevent pay-to-play practices.
Their post is a thoughtful and lengthy analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the “disclosure only” vs. “government regulation and debarment” schemes emerging throughout the country. Founded as they are by former prosecutors and ethics commission officials whose self-statedmission is to foster such laws as the means “to combat corruption and establish ethical local governments”, it is not surprising that CityEthics.org has reached the conclusion that “[d]isclosure is not an effective solution.”
Notwithstanding the difference in perspectives between the authors of the CityEthics.org site and the contributors to this blog, who view pay-to-play enforcement issues from the perspective of those required to establish compliance programs to comply with such laws and their oft-unintended consequences, the City Ethics post provides a solid recitation of the issue from the perspective of the regulating community and I recommend that you read it. Personal ego impels me, however, to respond to a few of the post’s assertions about the viability of a strict “government prohibition” solution as well as to defend the motivations of those who believe, as we do, that a scheme based on disclosure often accomplishes the same worthwhile goals without the burden of occasional draconian unintended consequences.
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As this blog has sought to highlight, pay-to-play laws at the state and municipal levels are in a constant state of transition as political forces seek to respond to public sentiment surrounding the uneasy connections between money, politics and government contracting. If anything, the national patchwork of pay-to-play regulation has become less coherent or uniform over the past several years. This is a trend which does not look to abate in 2011 and which places a premium on corporate compliance personnel who understand the various trends in the law.
