Evergreen Chapter Ethics Program Draws Crowd and Praise

J. Paul Blake

Editor’s note: ASPA President Erik Bergrud has appointed a working group to review ASPA’s Code of Ethics and have a draft document at the 2012 Annual Conference in Las Vegas. As a member of the Working Group on Ethics, J. Paul Blake was asked to develop a chapter program on ethics that might be replicated by others chapters as part of the process to obtain input from ASPA members.

Ethics in the public sector made for a lively panel presentation and discussion when the Evergreen Chapter sponsored “Ethical Leadership in the 21st Century–Working to Restore Public Trust,” Thursday, June 9, in Seattle.

About 100 municipal, county, public agency and private sector professionals attended the program held in collaboration with the Seattle Management Association (SMA). Wayne Barnett, director, Office of Ethics and Elections, City of Seattle; Amy Calderwood, ombudsman, King County and Seattle University Professor John Dienhart composed the panel moderated by Bill Grace, founder, Grace and Associates and former founder and director, Center for Ethical Leadership.

“The collaboration between ASPA and SMA provides many opportunities to expand the programs of both agencies and to create an environment where members of the two organizations can learn together, network, and share their successes and failures in public sector management,” said Steve Benowitz, president Evergreen Chapter. “By combining the resources of SMA and the Evergreen Chapter of ASPA, we are able to provide a wider range of presentations useful to our members.”

“We’ve partnered successfully on several occasions now with ASPA. The benefit for both organizations is in sharing the workload of the logistics, producing relevant events for both organizations and providing an expanded opportunity for networking for everyone attending,”? said Kathy Peterson, SMA president. “We look forward to partnering again with ASPA.”

The audience enjoyed lunch provided by SMA and was fully engaged in the discussion following comments by the panelists. “The program was very useful for practitioners. The panel presented practical examples and issues as well as both basic and more advanced issues,” said Benowitz.

Noting the high level of interest in the topic, Peterson said “the timing of this event was very important because of recent events and we received valuable feedback on how to improve the content for future discussions.”

The event was recorded for presentation on The Seattle Channel and is available via SeattleChannel.org.

ASPA member J. Paul Blake is a District 5 Representative on the ASPA National Council. Email: [email protected]

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