The law on limiting campaign expenditures has been changing over the past couple of years. But the law on limiting campaign contributions has not. The standard in many instances is more liberal than with campaign expenditures, in others it is the same. And the application of the standard is highly contextual. A law in one jurisdiction, or at a particular time, might be constitutional, while in another jurisdiction, or at a different time, it is not.

Contribution limits are an important part of government ethics, because contributions from those doing business with local governments, often called "legal bribery," are a major source of the belief people have that government officials can be bought. Removing this appearance of impropriety is a principal goal of public campaign financing programs.

The state of the law on limiting and banning campaign contributions from, and their solicitation by, restricted sources, including contractors and lobbyists, as well as their principals and immediate family members, is well summarized in the Second Circuit's decision in Green Party v. Garfield (July 13, 2010).

Update: August 9, 2010 (see below)

You've got to hand it to them:  Broward County (FL) commissioners don't give up. Some of them have fought and fought against the prospect of having a new ethics code, written by the county ethics commission. August 10 is the deadline by which they must either approve the new ethics code, or it will appear on the November ballot.

After the county attorney's attempt in June to declare parts of the code unconstitutional or beyond the EC's authority led to a backlash against the idea of undermining the code, and then an independent lawyer's memo taking the same position also failed, there was only one possible way to stop the inevitable:  water down the code with a so-called "glitch ordinance."

A Poor Approach to Being Ethical
It's great when candidates talk up acting ethically. But it's going too far, and setting a bad precedent, when a candidate takes a lie-detector test in which he says that he never engaged in unethical activities in private- or public-sector work, as reported in the Moultrie (GA) Observer.

Update: June 18, 2010 (see below)

In a memo dated June 14, 2010 (attached; see below), the Broward County (FL) county attorney told the county commission that lobbying provisions in the county ethics commission's proposed ethics code are unconstitutional and, therefore, should either be removed by a "glitch ordinance," modified by exclusion, or confirmed as unconstitutional by seeking a declaratory judgment from a court.

According to an article in yesterday's Sun-Sentinel, the very next day the county commission voted unanimously to seek a declaratory judgment. Apparently, they didn't want to be the ones to declare provisions they disliked unconstitutional. In the one day they were given, they certainly didn't have the time to deeply consider either the constitutional arguments or the alternative approaches.

According to an article in yesterday's Chicago Daily Observer, Cook County commissioner Tony Peraica has proposed a series of improvements to the ethics code. Here's a summary of the proposed amendments, taken from the commissioner's website (there's also a video on the topic):

According to an article in the Jacksonville Times-Union this week, former Jacksonville council member and current lobbyist Ginny Myrick said, in response to lobbying reforms suggested by Jacksonville ethics officer, and City Ethics' president, Carla Miller, that (not exact words) "it is important for exact payments from clients to remain protected because the information is proprietary. Under Miller’s proposals, lobbyists would have to disclose a range of payments they receive from clients, but not exact numbers."

Norm Ostrau, director of Florida Atlantic University’s Public Ethics Academy added, “I know of no municipality that has lobbyists report their fees.”

The idea that fees are proprietary information in the context of a regulated group was surprising to me, so I did some research. Here is what I found.