Ethics Policy Ordinance No. 3585 Summary

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City of Morristown, Tenn. Ethics Policy Ordinance No. 3585 Ethics policies are a form of external control aimed at preserving ethical and responsible conduct within an organization (Cooper, 2012). The City of Morristown, Tenn.'s (2017) "Ethics Policy" or Ordinance No. 3585, aims to instill social responsibility in their representatives, while also alluding to how breaking the public trust will impair the City's ability to conduct government business. Morristown's Ethics Policy has been reviewed and rewritten twice since the Tenn. Comprehensive Governmental Ethics Reform Act of 2006 was passed. While the Policy sets out minimum ethical standards for public officials, it also, "encourages public officials to pursue the highest ethical ideals …show more content…

3585. These themes are used to set up the minimum standard of conduct that is deemed ethical by the City of Morristown. The Collins Gem Thesaurus lists trust faithfulness, honesty, and integrity as synonyms thus alluding to their interchangeability (Ehrlich, 1990, p. 465). The use of several words that have similar meanings multiple times in a document shows their importance, and in this case that importance aligns with public officials need to maintain and build up the public trust. As Cooper (2012) points out, "maintaining the public trust is a crucial aspect of administrative responsibility, (even) the appearance of conflict of interest may be sufficient to jeopardize faith in the integrity of government" (p. 121). If the integrity of the government is in question, even if there is no actual wrongdoing, impartiality may also be called into …show more content…

If an individual did not break any laws, but their actions result in a civil suit, the City will indemnify the individual and provide legal expenses (City of Morristown, Tenn., 2017). However, once again the standards set are vague. While I attending Barry University's Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law I learned that defining and setting a standard for acting in good faith or having an individual "reasonably believe" that their actions were in the plaintiff’s best interest is subjective. While agencies have SOPs and SOGs to outline expectations and conduct in the line of duty, experts in their respective field can come in and argue contradictory points, which is often what the plaintiff's attorney will seek

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