Ethics Commissions/Administration

Ethics commissions appointed by local legislative bodies, mayors, or county executives are often referred to as "independent commissions." I don't believe that these commissions should be considered "independent," because those who select the EC members are under the members' jurisdiction and, in f…

The Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL), an association of American and Canadian practitioners in the areas of conflicts of interest, campaign finance, transparency, elections, and lobbying, is looking into the possibility of offering certification programs in these areas. I assume the cour…

Reading in The Economist a distinction made by Paul Kingsnorth, a leader of the uncivilization movement, a response to climate change, made me wonder whether it is also important with respect to government ethics. His distinction is between a "problem" and a "predicament." A "problem" is something …

Can local legislators be trusted with the discretion to reimburse their colleagues for legal fees in ethics proceedings? This question is raised by a decision of the Wellington, FL council a few weeks ago. According to an editorial in the Town-Crier Online, Wellington's mayor was found by the count…

Many local legislative bodies have ethics committees, even where there is an ethics commission. The reason for these self-regulatory committees is that these bodies have their own codes of conduct that go beyond conflicts of interest, and which are enforced, discussed, and amended separate from the…

Although citizen participation is not part of government ethics, it's important to keep reminding ourselves that it is central to government ethics, because it is a principal goal of government ethics programs. Officials' ethical misconduct undermines citizen trust and participation, but there are …

Updates: February 5 and April 16, 2014 (see below) Here is a must-read Star-Ledger op-ed piece by Paula Franzese, a professor at Seton Hall Law School and former chair of the New Jersey Ethics Commission (2006 to 2010). She provides a short history of the selection process for the executive directo…

Crowdfunding is a 21st-century way of funding projects that are not being funded by the government, the stock market, venture capitalists, or even angel investors. But it's really not as 21st-century as people think. For example, the Statue of Liberty's pedestal was crowdfunded back in 1885 (withou…