Ethics Reform

According to an article in the Palm Beach Daily News, Florida law "forbids government bodies from advocating for voters to vote yes or no in a referendum election, and from spending funds to advertise for that purpose." But as with all laws, there are ways to end-run this prohibition, and the town of Palm Beach's council and city...

Meredith McGehee wrote a thought-provoking Campaign Legal Center blog post yesterday about the upside of election time ethics attacks on opponents.

"Current political thinking generally laments this development, arguing that it cheapens the process and puts all politicians in a bad light." But she sees it as a good development. I don't...

Four current attempts at ethics reform show the incredible variety of approaches and ideas of what government ethics is.

Prohibiting County Employees from Contracting with the County
According to an article in yesterday's West Hawaii Today, a proposal before the County of Hawai'i council has four provisions, some of them modeled after the city and county of...

Three years ago, I featured Memphis in a blog post, noting that, in the last six years, 66 government officials, employees, and contractors had been found guilty of various sorts of government-related crimes. Last year, I noted that the city's mayor had resigned under a cloud of accusations. In between, the city and the county (Shelby County) passed ethics codes...

An Active EC Is a Good Thing
Local officials often say that because there are no complaints to or advisory opinions by their ethics commissions, their town or city government does not have ethics problems. Actually, it's the other way around. Local governments with active ethics commissions, especially dealing with advisory opinions, are more likely to have healthy ethical environments. It shows that people trust the ethics commission, it shows that people are thinking about ethics...

I make a great effort to be nonpartisan in choosing what and whom I write about. I am an unaffiliated voter who believes in nonpartisan local government. But yesterday, the Republican Party took a strong stand against government ethics and, in its most important statement in years, totally ignored it.