Targeting Ethics Reform
In May, I wrote a blog post about ethics reforms proposed by a Cook County (IL) commissioner. I felt they didn't have much chance of passing.

Lo and behold, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune this week, these reforms passed the Board's finance committee unanimously, and they'll be voted on by the Board today.

Did I give the Cook County Board too little credit, or was I simply too naive?

Forget the fascinating range of ethics programs at the local level. It is congressional ethics programs that get the national attention. And with all this attention, what Congress does, and fails to do, has a great effect not only on what happens at the local level, but also on the rhetoric employed there.

When Congress self-administered its own ethics, every council or county commission member could say that if self-regulation is good enough for Congress, it's good enough for them. Only legislative bodies, the rhetoric went, can oversee legislators.

When Congress recently set up the semi-independent Office of Congressional Ethics, and the OCE actually took its job seriously, this gave heart and ammunition to good government groups seeking the independent, transparent investigation of possible ethics violations. It's no accident that the last couple of years have been very active years in local government ethics reform, and that ethics self-regulation appears self-serving.

The headline in Eliza Newlin Carney's Rules of the Game column for the National Journal yesterday sums up what often happens when a legislative body creates a truly effective ethics body:

The lead article in yesterday's New York Times was on charities set up by members of congress. I've written a few times about the use of charities to get around campaign finance and gift provisions (1 2 3), but this is an area of special creativity, where new ideas, and new reasons for regulation, arise frequently. For example, the foundation on which the article focuses employs the congressman's son, a Rialto, CA council member, as its CEO and President.

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).

Gifts from restricted sources, that is, from those doing business with the local government (and their lobbyists), are exceptionally damaging, in that they make the public believe their officials can be bought or that their officials are running a pay-to-play government. It's too bad that at least some members of the Los Angeles ethics commission don't recognize this.

Time Limitations on Ethics Proceedings in Louisiana, and Why They're Bad
The Louisiana ethics board handles ethics, disclosure, campaign finance, and lobbying for the state and for the state's local governments. It is, like all ethics agencies, understaffed, underfunded, and overstretched. So according to an article in Monday's Baton Rouge Advocate, it has asked, among other things, for a longer period of time in which to do its work. The law now gives the board "one year from the date upon which a sworn complaint is received to either dismiss the complaint or file formal charges." (§708(A))

This seems reasonable. How long should it take simply to file charges? But this assumes (i) that there is no backlog of cases, and (ii) that everyone is cooperating. It also assumes that the ethics board can get quorums for its meetings, that there aren't other considerations, such as whether to turn the matter over to criminal authorities, and that related matters aren't discovered, expanding the investigation.