Ethics Reform

My second blog post on the Chicago ethics task force's second report identified what I considered to be its worst ideas. Mayor Emanuel's recommendations accepted its bad ideas just as much as its good ideas.

The second round of Chicago ethics reform recommendations, based on the ethics task force's second report (attached; see below), have been proposed by Chicago's mayor Rahm Emanuel (click here to read a summary...

After Common Cause questioned the fitness of Baltimore's government ethics director for his job, an opinion piece called for him to be fired, and...

Independent agencies, especially those with lots of money to spend and contracts to enter into, require not just ethics policies, but a comprehensive, independent ethics program. This rarely acknowledged fact has been made clear once again by an external audit of an agency that proved completely unable to self-regulate its officials' and employees' conflicts of interest. The agency is the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), which...

According to an official press release, yesterday the mayor of Phoenix announced the formation of an Ethics Review Ad Hoc Task Force, with eleven members appointed by the mayor, to be chaired by former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley and staffed by the city’s law and human resources departments.

The worst recommendation in the Chicago ethics task force's second report (attached; see below) involves the role it wants the corporation counsel to play in the city's ethics program: prosecuting attorney.

I feel strongly that a corporation counsel's office should play no role in an ethics program. See the section of my book Local Government Ethics Programs...