Law is also about relationships. But law only deals with what we must do — the minimal standards necessary for our society to function. Ethics deals with what we ought to do and how we ought to treat one another so that we can have the highest quality relationships possible. No society can make enough laws to cover every ethical situation. That's the trap people fall into with ethics laws: If I follow all the California ethics laws, then I must be an ethical public official. That's incorrect — and dangerous.

Who wouldn't want the highest quality relationships possible? Imagine if everyone you crossed paths with in a day treated you the way they treat the people they love when they are at their best.

Ethics is no fool, however, or a chump. Ethics should help us see the world as it is, and should keep us open to the possibility that there are some good people in the world. So, we expect the worst, but hope for the best and are grateful when those people come into our lives.

When many of us think about ethics, we're probably thinking about private or personal ethics — the choices we make in our own lives about honesty, fairness, kindness, and doing the right thing in our relationships with the people around us.

And at its core, ethics is personal. It's a choice each person makes about whether they will do the right thing, whether they will treat others well. Ethics also involves action — that's

Ethics is no fool, however, or a chump. Ethics should help us see the world as it is, and should keep us open to the possibility that there are some good people in the world. So, we can expect the worst, but hope for the best.

When many of us think about ethics, we're probably thinking about private or personal ethics — the choices we make in our own lives about honesty, fairness, kindness, and doing the right thing in our relationships with the people around us.

And at its core, ethics is personal. It's a choice each person makes about whether they will do the right thing, whether they will treat others well. Ethics also involves action — that's why we say we "do ethics."

The funny thing is, teaching our children to do the right thing in their relationships is generally seen as one of the most fundamental roles of being a parent. Think about the sometimes painful moral lessons we were taught: don't take things that aren't yours; tell the truth even when it's hard; say you're sorry and mean it; treat people the way you want to be treated. But at some point, we're no longer the ethics learners — we become the ethics teachers. And how often do the excuses we give ourselves as adults sound exactly like the ones our children could never get away with? I made that mistake because I just didn't see it coming. I'm so busy I just couldn't get around to it. That person harmed me sometime in the past and I've carried a grudge for years. Well, remember the huge fight we had? That's when I stopped respecting that person.

Most of us navigate personal ethics by instinct. When the chair of Santa Clara's Governance and Ethics Committee was asked how he thinks about ethics, he said something very close to what Justice Potter Stewart once said about pornography: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." Most of us would say the same thing, and that's understandable.

And feelings can be genuinely useful in recognizing ethics issues — personal and public. When you're about to do something and your stomach turns. When you're asked to do something and it starts eating away at you from the inside. When you witness something and you're just not comfortable with it. When you realize you wouldn't like it if someone treated you this way. These gut reactions are often your first signal that something is ethically wrong.

That last one — you wouldn't want to be treated this way — is the Golden Rule, arguably the one universal ethical principle that appears in every religion and culture on the planet. Treat others as you would want to be treated. The Diamond Rule goes further: treat others as they want to be treated — as free, equal, rational human beings capable of making their own decisions. That's the fundamental moral principle. And the Titanium Rule raises the bar to its highest: treat others the way you treat the people you love when you are at your best.

But here's the problem. Feelings are a starting point, not a finish line. You can't build a public ethics program on "I know it when I see it." You can't write an ethics code, train officials, investigate complaints, or hold anyone accountable based on a gut feeling.

And when feelings become the standard, the results can be dangerous. In Santa Clara's mandatory AB 1234 ethics training in October 2023, the City Attorney put up a slide that first correctly stated officials should "avoid even the appearance of impropriety" — and then immediately asked: "If you feel like you are not being influenced by personal interests, why should you remove yourself?" That one slide turned an objective legal standard into a subjective feeling. It gave every council member a permission slip: I don't feel conflicted, so I'm not. Every ethicist knows we are terrible judges of our own fairness and independence. That's exactly why appearance standards exist — because the public can only see what you do, not what you feel.

So What Is Ethics in Santa Clara?

Ethics is the way city officials and staff act when they are at their best — earning the public's trust. An ethics code lays out well-grounded standards, developed across time and across cultures, that prescribe how local government and the individuals who comprise it ought to treat residents and other city stakeholders to earn and keep their trust.

This is where public ethics changes the game.

What Is Public Ethics?

Public ethics is something different from personal ethics. Public ethics is an institutional commitment to build public trust through every encounter a member of the public has with "the city." Cities promise residents that they can expect to be treated as they should be by those who have a fiduciary duty — the highest duty under the law — to go beyond the demands of the law and meet the requirements for public trust, as outlined in the city's Code of Ethics and Values. That means identifying and meeting the public's needs, and never serving or appearing to serve personal, private, or special interests.

But public ethics doesn't stop at individual encounters. Public ethics also includes the promises between a local government and its people about how that government will manage the public and political life of the community. How officials and staff negotiate with one another and with outside interests. How they speak to residents and about them when residents aren't in the room. How they handle compromise and disagreement. How they balance majority and minority positions without silencing the minority or bulldozing the majority. How the community handles power. How it balances competing interests. And how it carries out the most fundamental duty of public service — acting in the best interests of the people.

Public ethics is an institutional commitment backed up by lots of personal ethics choices. The city commits to standards of integrity, transparency, and accountability. Then every official, every staff member, every day, makes the personal choices that either honor or betray that commitment — disclosing a conflict of interest, resisting pressure from a powerful donor, sharing information the public has a right to know.

When the institution gets it right — when it builds the codes, the training, the oversight, the culture — it makes it easier for good people to make good choices and harder for anyone to hide bad ones. That's what Santa Clara built between 1998 and 2008, and it's what was systematically dismantled afterward.

What Is Public Trust?

Public trust is the people's confident reliance that their government works hard — in public and in private — only to fairly advance the best interests of the public, carefully managing conflicts of interest and the appearance of conflict so that decision-making remains independent, impartial, transparent, and accountable to the people they serve.

In Santa Clara, we know that public trust rises or falls based on people's perceptions. When the city enjoys its highest public trust, residents also say that political campaigns are honorable, public officials' ethics are impeccable, city services are superb and affordable, government engages, listens to, and deeply respects what its public thinks, and quality of life is judged excellent.

In Santa Clara, public trust involves ethics, character, competence, and partnership with the people.

Public ethics is how city government, and everyone involved in it, acts when they are at their best — earning the people's trust.

The main changes from where we were: I restored your fiduciary duty language, the "every encounter" framing, the "never serving or appearing to serve personal, private, or special interests," and the critical point that no society can make enough laws to cover all ethical situations. I also split the public ethics section into two movements — first the individual encounters, then the broader institutional promises — which follows your original structure.