Ethics Complaints and Local Government: The Case of Florida

This paper analyzes complaints about ethics at the local level of government. Several databases, including ethics complaints filed with the Florida Commission on Ethics, are drawn on to test hypotheses that might explain why officials in some Florida counties receive more or fewer ethical complaints than do officials in other counties. The findings indicate that those counties that experience population-growth pressures and that have highly educated populations are likely to have more ethics complaints filed against their officials than are counties with the opposite characteristics. These findings, although tentative and limited to Florida, point to the need to study more fully and to understand the contextual influences on ethics complaints. In addition, the study results suggest that explanations for ethical wrongdoing may need to reach beyond finding faults or weakness in individuals who commit such acts or in the organizations that conduct the public's business.