Campaign Finance

Money rarely speaks as loudly and personally as it did for Tom Golisano, a billionaire who appears to have been the principal force in pushing the Democrats out of power in Albany, after he was snubbed by the party to which he has been a principal patron. And rarely has a good government advocate shown so clearly that he doesn't even know what government ethics is.

In the midst of a big corruption probe, a pair of back-and-forth ethics complaints filed with a nearly toothless ethics commission in El Paso doesn't seem like much. But it does sheds some light on how much El Paso government is about the players rather than the citizens. And it touches on some issues that are important everywhere, including the use of lawsuits to cripple ethics commissions, legal fees for ethics...

I am always fascinated at the ways in which even the most reform-minded politicians can kill ethics reform proposals that might cause them some embarrassment. Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has done a great deal for ethics reform, but at least one reform bill, which on its face seems pretty minor, has apparently gotten in his craw.

"As far as I'm concerned I never connect anything I do in government with fundraising. I never have."

—Illinois Governor Pat Quinn after it was learned that, in the midst of his seeking serious ethics reform, including campaign finance reform, his campaign aide was asking interest groups to raise money for him. (from today's Chicago Tribune)

The two best defenses against dealing responsibly with a conflict are that the local government attorney told me it was okay, and I didn't know there was a conflict. The first can be dealt with by getting the local government attorney out of the government ethics picture. But the second requires something few local government ethics codes require: applicant disclosure.

“If Boss Tweed were alive today, he would be a placement agent.” So said New York's attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, announcing a settlement with the Carlyle Group, by which the Carlyle Group, an outside investment manager for many government pension funds, will no longer hire placement agents to get public pension business and will greatly limit its officers' and employees' campaign contributions to anyone involved with public pensions (according to...