City Related

An ethics controversy involving the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) has led to the resignation of four of the seven members of the APS ethics commission, a failure to replace them, and a threat to the schools' accreditation status.

On Friday, the Louisville ethics commission found that a council member intentionally violated several ethics provisions. This was its first major action under the city's new ethics code, which I wrote about last year. The EC gave the council member the most serious penalty it can give to a council member, a letter of reprimand and a letter of formal censure.

It's hard to know where to start with a situation in Crescent City, CA, a town of 7,500 in northern California that has already been the subject of a City Ethics blog post.

One of the most striking things about the situation is that it is the first time I have seen an anti-SLAPP-suit defense used successfully against someone who appears to have been found guilty of an ethics violation in order to stop her criticism of council actions (that is, by SLAPPers against someone they themselves SLAPPed).

Electing EC Members
Is electing an ethics commission a good idea? I had never heard of an elected EC until this week, when I read that the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, an Indian nation in Kansas, canceled an EC election for four out of six seats, because there were no candidates.

As discussed in an earlier blog post, eighteen months ago the Dallas council, under the prodding of the mayor at the time, passed some ethics reforms. According to a Dallas News editorial last month, only six months later the council backed off reporting requirements for gifts they receive, creating a number of exceptions.

"The appropriate authority" is a vague phrase to base a major ethics reform proposal on, but that is just what the District of Columbia's draft Comprehensive Ethics Reform Act of 2011 does.

Introduced Tuesday by the council chair, this act is neither comprehensive nor does it create the accountability that the name of the new ethics office, the Office of Government Accountability, suggests.

On December 6, according to an article on the Chicago Talks website, Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel promised that he would make many ethics reforms to “change the culture” of corruption and cronyism at City Hall.