In May I wrote a blog post about a so-called ethics emergency in Corpus Christi,
declared by a lame-duck council at its last meeting. This so-called emergency was the excuse for pushing through ethics
reforms without running them by the city's ethics commission or allowing public discussion. The new
council quickly suspended the reforms, pending review by the ethics
commission.
At least that was the excuse the new council used...
Open Records Requests and
Ethics Proceedings
In an unusual twist on the confidentiality of ethics proceedings,
counsel for the Colorado Springs mayor's former client, the person who gave rise to the mayor's apparent conflict of interest, has made an open records
request for all documents related to the ethics proceeding against the
mayor, according to an
article in the Colorado...
A few local government ethics issues come together in the story
behind the arrest today of 44 people in a political corruption and
international money laundering ring based in New Jersey. The story is
best told, so far, in the
press release of the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.
"In my view, the suggestion [by Judge Sotomayor] that [campaign]
contributions are tantamount to
bribery should offend anyone who’s ever contributed to a political
campaign — including the millions of Americans who donated money in
small and large amounts to the Presidential campaign of the man who
nominated Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court."
The Politicization of
Officials Selecting Ethics Commission Members
People should not be political footballs, and ethics commission members
even moreso. But that's what can happen when officials are allowed to
select ethics commission members. According to an
article in yesterday's Tulsa ...