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Kudos go to Alexandria for hiring an ethicist
By Lauren | January 5, 2009
The Washington Post reported recently that, faced with serious revenue shortfalls and painful spending cuts, the town of Alexandria, Virginia hired a professional ethicist to help officials recognize and account for the moral implications of their budgeting decisions. This was an unusual step. Although hospitals frequently hire ethicists to help them resolve difficult patient care dilemmas, governments are rarely so careful to make sure that their budgeting decisions make good ethical sense. Alexandria deserves kudos for going that extra mile.
The town’s need for an ethicist came out of massive budget cuts brought on by the recent economic downturn. When times are good there’s money for every politician’s pet project, but when budget cuts go as deep as they did in Alexandria, even effective, popular programs are at risk for having their funding reduced or eliminated. That creates a tough dilemma for politicians - should they fund drug prevention or senior services? School lunches or homeless shelters? According to the Post, the consulting ethicist helped Alexandria’s officials to refrain from imposing thoughtless across-the-board equal cuts or looking only at the bottom line. Instead, with the ethicist’s help, officials chose to wrestle with competing values until they were able to determine how to make precious tax dollars do the most good.
This story highlights one of the most challenging aspects of addressing ethical dilemmas. Frequently, it’s not so much a matter of right-versus-wrong as it is right-versus-right, and it can take a lot of thought to identify and balance the values that are at stake. One critic of the town’s decision to hire outside ethical advice was quoted in the Post as saying that, if local officials “‘aren’t smart enough to be able to figure these things out for themselves, something’s wrong.’” That critic was off-base. Ethical decision making takes time, care, and thought, and most people don’t have the training or experience to work through ethical dilemmas in a clear and intentional way. Alexandria’s officials deserve a lot of credit for recognizing the severity of their problem and having the humility to ask for expert help.
To read the Post article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/13/AR2008121300904.html.
Topics: Social Ethics, ethics |
February 1st, 2009 at 10:36 pm
[...] presents Kudos go to Alexandria for hiring an ethicist posted at The Business Ethics Blog, saying, “This town realized that business ethics can go a [...]