Ethics in government conference held A conference on ethics geared toward state legislators, agency directors, ethics advisors, general counsels, and human resource managers was cosponsored by the LBJ School and the Texas Ethics Commission last fall. This is the third year the conference was offered. Called "Ethics in Government: Earning the Public Trust," the conference included discussions on the news media's heightened scrutiny of government as well as a look at the media's own ethical standards; an examination of current rules under open records and open meetings laws; a presentation on ethics issues tied to emerging technologies, such as the debate over whether monitoring employee e-mail is an invasion of privacy; and a discussion of a "Global Bill of Rights," which touches on ethics in the international arena. Other presentations focused on ethics and leadership, lobby issues and gifts, training for ethics, mediation and the public policy dispute resolution process, and privatization of government functions. Several members of the LBJ School community made presentations and acted as moderators. These included LBJ School Professor Elspeth Rostow; Howard Graves, Distinguished Visiting Tom Slick Professor of World Peace; Texas Monthly Editor and LBJ School Lecturer Paul Burka; Gary Chapman, director of the LBJ School 21st Century Project; Frank Battle (LBJ Class of 1981), special assistant to the Texas Speaker of the House; Carl Reynolds (LBJ Class of 1985), general counsel for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice; Andrew W. Bowman (LBJ Class of 1995), program director, UT Austin Center for Public Policy Dispute Resolution; and Anneliese Geis, director of the LBJ School Office of Conferences and Training. Battle and Reynolds were also on the conference planning committee.

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