Public Administration,

Accountability, &
Public Service Ethics
 Who Should Rule?
Rosenbloom & McCurdy
According to Dwight Waldo: Public administrators must:
 Respect Democratic Values
 Obtain a Diverse Education
 Have Broad Based Expertise

 Develop a Broad Understanding of Politics

 Judgment
The Process of Judgment Includes:
 1. A person’s capacity to scan a situation
 2. Discover the significant aspects of a case in question
 3. Make sense of the situation
 4. Decide on a proper course of action

 Honest Justification for Final Decision

 Provide moral coherence to implement final decision

 Personal Integrity
Subjective Responsibility
 Represents our own feelings & beliefs about responsibility
& decision-making
 Personal values about what is right & wrong
 Our personal values shape our professional conduct
 Values are what guides discretionary judgment

 Personal integrity depends upon people possessing the self-

discipline & moral courage to act on a commitment, even
if doing so requires sacrifice & effort.
 Public Service Ethics Expectations for Public Officials
John Rohr: Ethics for Bureaucrats

 Should act in accord with the basic principles & with an

appreciation for regime values
 Personal judgments are subordinated to the outcomes of
legitimate processes
 Professional judgments come from legal & professional
directives
 Emphasis on Laws and Values

 Education
 Management training, Academic training in public administration,
Inter- & Intra-agency training,
 Public Service Ethics Expectations for Public Officials
Dennis Thompson

Objective Responsibility:

1. Public Administrators are most immediately responsible

to their supervisor for carrying out directives & goals
2. Public Administrators are responsible for subordinates
they supervise
3. Public Administrators are responsible to elected
officials
4. Public Administrators are responsible to the citizenry.
 Administrative Ethics
Thompson
 Ethic of Neutrality
 Administrators are ethically neutral; do not act on moral principles but are
responsible for implementing principles associated with orders & polices
associated with their jobs
 Administrators serve the organization so the organization can serve society
 Administrators are reliable without infusing their own personal value structure
into their job functions

 Critique
 Undercuts the importance of administrative discretion & thus undermines
accountability to citizens
 Most decisions are incremental – large changes rarely occur in an immediate
fashion
 Even if civil servants disagree with a directive, they will likely not resign;
 Difficulties associated with resigning – vested rights (retirement, pensions, seniority) &
job skills are powerful incentives for administrators to hold onto their jobs even if
they disagree with how the organization is serving society
 Obedience and resignation are not the only ways civil servants can dissent
 Legal protections for whistleblowers
 Administrative Ethics
Thompson
 Ethic of Structure
 Even if civil servants operate with a specific type of moral code or
structure, they cannot be held morally responsible for governmental
decision-making
 Personal moral responsibility only extends to specific duties
associated with their office for which they are liable
 No individual is a necessary cause for any organizational outcome
 Gaps between individual intention and collective outcomes
 Requirements of the Role – duties of office for large scale
organizations require individual actions, and while these may seem
harmless, when combined with other organizational directives can
produce harmful decisions.
 Although the policy in question maybe morally wrong, each individual has
done their part or moral duty according to the requirements of their job.
 Ethic of Structure Critique
 Taken together, this type of ethical guideline would enable
democratic values to fall apart
 Does not take into account individual & collective accountability &
responsibility

 We must take into accounts patterns of omissions, patterns of

conformity, effects on employee and citizen rights
 Individual & collective motives of those making decisions –
Watergate
 Public’s need to hold civil servants to a higher standard than they
might necessarily hold themselves
 Complications of applying morality to the public sphere
 Rohr’s work is especially helpful here.
 Ways Public Officials Can Undermine
Public Confidence in Government:
Unmaking Administrative Evil

Corruption
 Betraying public trust to advance private interests
 Political exchanges
 Creating appearances of impropriety

Subversion
 Process by which values & principles are contradicted

Power
 Increases temptation to change moral beliefs & principles
to achieve a certain end result
 Moral Basis for Dissenting in
Public Sector Environments

Criminal conduct occurs

 See Mosher article on Watergate

Actions occur that undermine democratic accountability

 Examples include the Holocaust, Communist rule, Apartheid

Actions violate civil liberties of individual citizens or

undermine rules that make democratic decision possible
Actions violate one’s central moral convictions or
standards of justice
 National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of
Labor, Occupational Safety & Health Administration

 Case Background:
 Biden administration’s response to COVID-19 – key goals was to get more Americans
vaccinated, especially those that worked in businesses
 Sept. 2021: Secretary of Labor, acting through OSHA, enacted a vaccine mandate, which was
an emergency rule, for all private companies with 100 or more employees, or employees had
to show a negative COVID test once a week at their own expense
 OSHA’s mission is to ensure occupational safety, which includes safe & healthful working conditions;
occupational safety standards must be reasonably necessary or appropriate to provide safe or
healthful employment; notice & comment rulemaking procedures must be put into place before
safety changes can be made
 Exceptions to notice & comment rulemaking:
 Employees are exposed to grave danger from exposure to substances or agents determined to be
toxic or physically harmful or from new hazards AND
 That the emergency standards is necessary to protect employees from such danger
 OSHA established Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) to implement this effort (11/5/2021)
 Affected ~84 million American workers
 Preempted state laws
 Medical exceptions
 Rule made no distinctions based on industry or risk of exposure
National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of
Labor, Occupational Safety & Health Administration

 Case Background:
 OSHA had never before issued such a mandate; neither had
Congress
 Court of Appeals for 5th Circuit issued a nationwide stay of ETS
implementation on 11/12/21 based on legal questions concerning
OSHA’s statutory authority
 Sixth Circuit becomes involved; denied en banc initial hearing;
OSHA asked Sixth Circuit to vacate Fifth Circuit’s stay
 3-judge panel dissolved 5 th Circuit’s stay, supporting OSHA’s
mandate & maintaining its rule was compliant with statutory law
 Supreme Court granted emergency hearing; oral arguments held
on 1/7/22
 National Federation of Independent Business represented private
businesses, nonprofit organizations, 20+ states
 National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of
Labor, Occupational Safety & Health Administration

 Court’s Opinion (Kavanaugh)

 Reversed 6th Circuit opinion
 Argued OSHA’s emergency rule “is no everyday exercise of federal power”
 Represented a significant encroachment into the lives & health of vast
number of employees
 OSHA’s mandate does not authorize the Secretary of Labor to enforce this
type of authority
 Risk of being infected with COVID-19 does not constitute an emergency risk
that represents a hazardous danger
 Not an occupational hazard
 An attempt by an administrative agency to regulate daily life
 Such an effort would expand OSHA’s regulatory authority beyond its statutory
intent
 This type of regulation must take into account the degree & kind of everyday risk
American workers are exposed to
 Lack of historical precedent
National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of
Labor, Occupational Safety & Health Administration
Gorsuch, Thomas, Alito Concurrence

Key question they pose:

 Who Decides? More specifically, who decides how to govern
the lives of 84 million Americans?
 Question is not how to respond to the pandemic but who
holds the power to do so
 The answer is the states and Congress, not OSHA
 Trying and stressful times do not constitute the application
of extraordinary measures by an administrative agency
 National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of
Labor, Occupational Safety & Health Administration
Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan Dissenting Opinion

 Public health calamity caused by COVID-19

 Death of 1 million Americans; hospitalized 4 million
 Transformation of the workplace

 Supported OSHA’s decision to ensure health & safety in the workplace

 Majority handicaps the federal government to respond to COVID-19’s threat

 “Acting outside of its competence and without legal basis, the Court displaces the judgments of the
Government officials given the responsibility to respond to workplace health emergencies.”

 Key Question: Who decides how much protection, and of what kind, American workers need from
COVID-19?
 Answer: An agency with experience & expertise in workplace health & safety, acting as Congress & the
President authorized? Or a court, lacking any knowledge of how to safeguard workplaces, and
insulated from responsibility for any damage it causes?
 Court’s members are elected by, and accountable, to no one
 Key ethical question

 “As disease and death continue to mount, this Court tells the agency that it cannot respond in
the most effective way possible. Without legal basis, the Court usurps a decision that rightfully
belongs to others. It undercuts the capacity of the responsible federal officials, acting well
within the scope of their authority, to protect American workers from grave danger.”