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):

I've been meaning for a long time to take a long second look at the City Ethics Model Code provision on the revolving door that many officials walk through between government and firms that do business with government. It's a complex matter, and local governments as well as states with jurisdiction over local government ethics deal with it in a variety of ways. Revolving door, or post-employment, provisions vary from a single sentence to almost 1,500 words in the District of Columbia.

Do Chinese walls (that is, mechanisms that separate someone from information or involvement in a matter) work in conflict situations in government? And what considerations determine whether they work or not?

One consideration is whether, even with the Chinese wall, there is still an appearance of a conflict. Another consideration is whether the individual will still have access to the information or still be involved in the matter despite the Chinese wall; that is, whether the Chinese wall is really a Chinese screen.

There are two important Chinese walls in the news the last couple of days. One involves congressional representatives in the position of choosing defense-related earmarks and their access to information about which recipients of those earmarks made campaign contributions to them, at what amounts and at what times. The other involves what was apparently a sweetheart deal between Florida and the United States Sugar Company, where the governor's chief of staff's law firm represented U.S. Sugar in the negotiations.

New York City's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has an ongoing problem confusing his job as mayor, his ownership of a big media company, and his philanthropic activities. One of the symptoms of this problem is the unusual revolving door he provides for some of his closest advisers.

(In a debate about a revolving door provision, also known as a "cooling off period")

"You do not take pizza from the oven and put it straight in your mouth. I believe that we should not take our legislative service and put it right in our own mouth."

—Missouri State Senator Jason Crowell (from an article in the Columbia Missourian). Unlike most of my Quotes of the Day, I found this one delightful.

Your big brother is a powerful member of city council, and you're just a deputy city clerk. There's got to be more than this! So you retire, take your pension of $68,000, and run for state representative, with all the support your brother and his friends can provide, adding another $86,000 in salary and the prospect of a second government pension. Not bad.

But not enough. You set up a lobbying firm, "to help businesses engage" with the city, and you let your partner engage with the state, since you can't do that yourself. For an office from which to lobby city officials, including your brother, you find a bargain: in your brother's building, where you and he already have your constituent offices.