making local government more ethical

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Robert Wechsler
When it comes to local lobbying oversight, cities are falling like flies. At least in Canada.

According to an article yesterday on the Vancouver, BC Metro News website, the city council voted unanimously to look into establishing a lobbying registry and hiring an independent ombuds, apparently to run the registry and more. This follows the vote to...
Robert Wechsler
It amazes me how many ways elected officials misuse charitable organizations to engage in ethical misconduct, especially to get around gift rules. One would think that charities would be sufficiently sacrosanct. But instead they are frequently used as an indirect form of pay to play, and they have played a major role in getting around campaign finance limitations.

The form of misuse of charitable organizations that this post will look at involves a company that wants to get around...
Robert Wechsler
I've written several posts about individuals who have created fiefdoms (a D.A., a housing authority director, a city pension board attorney, the...
Robert Wechsler
According to an article yesterday on the Baltimore Brew website, a year ago Baltimore's mayor officiated at a wedding between two individuals who lobby the city government. In Las Vegas, no less.

Mayors, judges and, sometimes, other local government officials often officiate at weddings. Some ethics codes have a special...
Robert Wechsler
The principal value of lobbying, according to both lobbyists and government officials, is the expert information lobbyists provide. The view is often stated that, with the resources they have, government officials could not effectively do their job without the expertise they obtain from lobbyists.

The public, however, has no idea how this information is used. When it turns out that a lobbyist effectively wrote a bill, argument, letter, or speech that an official presents as his own...
Robert Wechsler
According to an article in the November 29 issue of The Economist, when China banned gifts to government officials, sales of the principal producer of baijiu, a sort of Chinese vodka, fell 78% in just a year.

The only sales that would likely go down if gifts were banned across the board in the United States would be restaurant and golf club sales. That is because petty bribery is less a problem here than the ongoing reciprocal relationships between lobbyists and the...

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