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A week and a half ago, we discovered that Jon Corzine's tin ear couldn't hear an ethical freight-train speeding towards him at full-tilt. Fortunately, the people with whom he deals are not quite so immune to the sound of good sense. We can now claim that this ethical crisis has been safely averted - but we have to ask if it should have even come up in the first place.
Think about it. You are the guy (or gal) who awards government contracts. One of the proposals has your boss's boss listed as one of the directors. Your boss's boss has donated millions to this potential contract - enough to have an endowed chair given his family name. Hell, he helped start the damn thing!
You feel lucky, punk? You want to test your boss's boss's ethics and see if you don't get fired for spurning his pet project? Go ahead. Make his day.
For the record, I don't think Corzine would be stupid enough to retaliate against someone for a bid proposal that he acts like he was totally unaware of existing. It isn't actually a question of Corzine's ethics. It isn't even a question of appearances. It's a question of why we would want to put our career civil servants in such a position.
Let's say that Paul Sarlo never exerted any influence in the decision to award his employer a nice fat state contract. Even if you believe it - and I'm totally neutral on the issue - then you have to admit it looks bad. Not only does it look bad, but it puts Paul Sarlo entirely dependent on someone else's ethics. Someone he doesn't even know is going to decide whether they feel pressured enough to allow his name to influence their decision.
That's a bad place to be. It's a stupid ethical trap to leave waiting to snare the unwary. It's time are legislators took action to remove the temptation from that mouse trap. It's time New Jersey passed a statewide Hatch Act to promote ethical awareness and prevent destructive partisan influences from destroying our civil servants.
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