Special Counsel Robert S. Bennett's report on the District of Columbia council's earmark grants and personal services contracts was made public yesterday by the Washington City Paper. Before discussing Bennett's recommendations, I should disclose that City Ethics was asked by the D.C. council to advise them on related ethics issues, and we met shortly with two of Mr. Bennett's associates, but were not involved in any way in the investigation or preparation of the Bennett report.

It's an excellent report, and its recommendations, especially regarding council earmark grants, are must reading in any city that allows or is contemplating this sort of grant. The earmark recommendations start on p. 97 of the report (p. 100 of the PDF file).

It's been almost two years since the New York Times broke the story on the abuses of New York City council earmarks slush fund, which totaled about $50 million a year. This week, the council member featured in the Times article was expelled from the state senate for a violent act committed against his female companion, according to an article in yesterday's Times. And according to a Times article today, another council member was indicted by a federal grand jury for much the same sort of conduct. Not the violence, but the misuse of council earmarks to help himself and his family, which included charges of money laundering, extortion, and fraud.

But unlike the violent council member, this one was enabled by hundreds of elected and appointed city officials.

End runs around ethics and campaign finance laws are one of my favorite topics to write about. A sizeable percentage of the creative energies of government officials and their attorneys seems to go into coming up with ways of getting around these laws. And then arguing that such laws are of little value since you can't plug loopholes as fast as they can invent them.

The Center for Governmental Studies in California has just published a report on this very topic (although focused on the campaign finance side), aptly titled Loopholes, Tricks and End Runs: Evasions of Campaign Finance Laws, and a Model Law to Block Them (by Molly Milligan).

Ethics reform aimed at political opponents is a good way to undermine the whole idea of ethics reform. This is what is happening in San Jose.

San Jose starts off with an odd ethics program. Title 12: Ethics Provisions does not even have a conflict of interest provision, nor does the city have an ethics commission. It is primarily a campaign finance and lobbying law, with a gift provision and a revolving door provision. It is enforced by an Election Commission. Ethics matters are primarily left to the state.

Every two years, the mayor reviews the ethics laws and suggests reforms. The mayor made his suggestions this week, and the council members associated with labor hit the ceiling. Here are the suggestions, according to the mayor's office, as included in an article in yesterday's San Jose Mercury-News:

An interesting disagreement has arisen over what is required for a contract with a council member to constitute a conflict of interest in California. According to an article in the Valley Chronicle, the city of Hemet and the League of California Cities disagree with a grand jury about whether a particular council member has a conflict. The council member is the executive director, and her salary, taxes, etc. essentially the only expenditure, of a nonprofit organization running a program that is included in the city budget.

Update: November 11, 2009 (see below)

Is there any worse way to skirt government ethics rules and misuse public money and position than via a charitable organization? And yet it happens again and again. This time it happened in Baltimore, according to the results of an extensive investigation by the Baltimore Sun.