Tallahassee Referendum
Huffington Post article on the 11/4 referendum... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/04/tallahassee-anti-corruption_n_6104054.html
Ethics Reform
November 6, 2014
Oakland Ethics Reform Initiative Passes
I left out one big local ethics/election story from my blog post yesterday: the approval of an excellent ethics reform initiative in Oakland, with an approval percentage of 72%, according to the KQED News website. For a description of the referendum, read my July blog post.
November 5, 2014
Tallahassee, FL Passes Ethics Reform Referendum
This was a project that was helped by Represent.US and supported by citizen groups from right to left. I worked on the drafting of the referendum language. Here is today's press release from Represent.US: On Nov. 4th, 2014, voters in Tallahassee, Florida, made history by approving the first city An…
Ethics Codes & Reform
April 18, 2014
A Call for Academics to Provide Assistance to Government Ethics Programs
I read something very exciting today in the April 1 newsletter of the Ethics Section of the American Society for Public Administration. In a short essay entitled "Living in Glass Houses: Ethics Commissions in the United States," Stuart C. Gilman, who has had an illustrious career both in academia a…
January 29, 2014
Good News from Florida Legislative Leaders
After ripping apart one Florida ethics "reform" bill, it's nice to be able to say that Florida's legislative leaders are planning to do some good things this year. According to an Integrity Florida press release today, the senate and house leaders have committed themselves to do the following: Stre…
Ethics Codes & Reform
September 23, 2013
Government Ethics and the Limits of Mental Bandwidth
Sendhil Mullainathan's new book Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much (Times Books) has been getting a lot of attention lately. Although I haven't read it yet, I was intrigued by Cass Sunstein's review of the book in the September 26 issue of the New York Review of Books. Sunstein focuses o…
Conflicts of Interest
April 15, 2013
Gifts to Officials' Family Members
Many major cities do not prohibit gifts from those seeking special benefits from the city government (restricted sources) to family members of city officials. Such a prohibition may seem a stretch, at least theoretically. How can a government interfere in the gifts given to an official's family mem…
Ethics Codes & Reform
March 7, 2013
An Ethics Code in a Charter
In this, the third blog post on the Colorado ethics commission situation, I would like to look at the problems that can arise from placing an ethics code in a constitutional document, either a charter or, as in the Colorado case, the state constitution. It is an unfortunate fact that, in many juris…
January 30, 2013
Will New Jersey Improve Its Local Government Ethics Program?
New Jersey has one of the oddest approaches to local government ethics. Like several states, including Massachusetts, California, and Florida, a state ethics program has jurisdiction over local officials. But unlike other states, the state ethics program is not run by the state ethics commission. …
Ethics Codes & Reform
December 20, 2010
Mack Truck Exceptions to New Gift Provisions in Alabama
People in Alabama are falling over each other claiming that their ethics reforms give the state the best, toughest ethics laws in the nation. But when you take a closer look, some of them don't look all that good. A principal reform involves finally placing limits on gifts, apparently a radical mov…