The Partisanship of Ethics
The first pleasant surprise involves a blogger (Advance Indiana) who is disgusted with his own party's unethical conduct in his city/county, Indianapolis/Marion County. A native of Illinois, he compares it to Chicago, and he notes that his party took office because of the other party's unethical conduct. In this era of partisan blogging, it is nice to see recognition by a blogger of his own party's ethical problems.

Philadelphia, Baltimore, and now Louisville have come up with ethics reforms in the past week or so. Baltimore's reforms were disappointing, while Philadelphia's were a big surprise to everyone, and came with a few serious question marks. Louisville's reforms are hardly a surprise, and they stand somewhere between disappointing and true reform.

One of the best descriptions of an unethical environment in a government agency can be found in the two-page statement that followed the guilty plea of David Loglisci, the former chief investment officer for the New York state pension fund.

It's been four months since my latest update on San Bernardino County's failure to follow grand jury ethics reform recommendations with any action. An op-ed piece by Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, in this week's San Bernardino Sun calls for campaign contribution limits (there are currently none at all), a prohibition on off-year fundraising, disclosure requirements, and an ethics commission to enforce the law.

Unions are paid for by union members, business associations are paid for by businesses, but local government associations are paid for by taxpayers, not by local governments. And yet while unions represent members, and business associations represent businesses, local government associations represent local governments. This setup is asking for trouble.

In my previous blog post, the issue arose of voiding a planning and zoning commission's approval of a permit because one of the commission members had a conflict of interest. Connecticut law automatically invalidates the commission action, without any individual or body having to act. But this is unusual. In fact, most jurisdictions do not expressly provide for the avoidance of permits, contracts, or other transactions.