The second report of the Chicago Ethics Reform Task Force came out this week (see my posts on the first report and on the ordinances passed in response to it). The report contains several excellent recommendations and some original solutions to problems. But it also makes recommendations that stop short of optimal solutions, especially in the areas of independence, jurisdiction, transparency, systemic problems, and the role of the corporation counsel.

First for the good stuff. Here are the best recommendations in the second report:

A number of important issues arise from a case before the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board (ECDB) last week. The issues include: (1) how to treat an inadequate complaint; (2) how to treat a complainant in a proceeding, and (3) what to do when an ethics code and rules may be inadequate to a situation where there is a strong appearance of impropriety.

In this year of endless talk about voter fraud, there is not all that much talk about one area of fraud that has actually been proven to exist, and to make a difference:  absentee ballot fraud. This kind of fraud even comes with its own profession, the absentee ballot broker (boletera in southern Florida).

Boleteras are hired by local campaigns to go into nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and sometimes homes to help people fill out absentee ballots. The question is, how much help do they give? A little help is a good deed, a lot of help is fraud.

Update: Counsel for the Housing Authority informed me that it was the Authority board, through him, that originally notified HUD of problems, and that another counsel was involved in some of the relevant transactions. Therefore, I have made some changes to the original post.

An editorial in today's New Haven Register sets forth allegations about the West Haven (CT) Housing Authority that add up to a typical fiefdom (see the section on fiefdoms in my book Local Government Ethics Programs). This case is especially interesting to me, since I live in North Haven, not far away.

There appears to have been no effective local oversight of the housing authority staff, either by the housing authority commissioners, by the appointing authority (the mayor), by the council, or by anyone else in the government or the community.

Is it important that an ethics complaint be based on information that is known personally? Some ethics codes require this. But the fact is that many ethics violations are done secretly. It can take some serious, professional investigation to obtain the facts and relevant documents. This is why investigations by journalists are so valuable. What they uncover is often used by citizens, good government organizations, and others as the basis for an ethics complaint. And sometimes a government employee who has suspected misconduct has her suspicions confirmed by an investigative article, and uses a combination of personal knowledge and the investigation to prepare a complaint.

This issue has been raised in Louisville where, according to an article this week in the Courier-Journal, the chair of Kentucky Common Cause filed an ethics complaint against a council member based on a Courier-Journal investigative series. The council member's attorney attacked the complaint because it was not based on facts personally known to the complainant.

I believe that an ethics commission/ethics officer approach to local government ethics is far better than an inspector general approach. The simultaneous creation of an EC/EO approach in Palm Beach County, FL and an IG approach in neighboring Broward County provides a small laboratory for seeing which works better.

Thankfully, Brittany Wallman of the Sun-Sentinel has compared the two approaches in two articles, one yesterday, the other today.