Three months ago, I wrote about an ethics commission decision asking for the removal of a Louisville council member, and the start of proceedings in the council to do just that. I noted that the council member's reaction was pure denial and attack on the ethics commission.

According to an editorial yesterday in the Louisville Courier-Journal, the council voted unanimously to expel the council member. It is hard to believe that a council member who apologized and made restitution for her misconduct would have been expelled. The editorial says that the new ethics system in Louisville worked. But an extreme result, even if itself desirable, does not mean the system worked as best it could.

It staggers the imagination how combative local government officials can sometimes be with respect to ethics commissions. A year ago, I wrote about a former Sioux Falls (SD) council member, Kermit Staggers, who attacked complaints filed by the city's ethics board as "frivolous" and attacked its procedures when it gave him two private, that is confidential, reprimands.

But this wasn't nearly enough. He had to show them that they couldn't get away with reprimanding him. According to an article in the Argus Leader this April, he filed a complaint with the state's open meetings commission, ending in a reprimand of the ethics board for reaching a decision during an executive session (the decision was to dismiss another complaint against him).

According to the Wisconsin Supreme Court majority, a state legislature does not have to follow ethics laws, even ethics laws expressly designed to meet constitutional requirements. This shocking statement comes from the opinion in the case Wisconsin v. Fitzgerald, which I discussed in a recent blog post. The opinion came down on Tuesday, in a case about whether a legislative committee violated the state's open meetings act in passing the infamous government union collective bargaining bill with only two hours' notice. This post will consider this decision's effect on local government ethics, at least in Wisconsin.

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).

Two types of independence often clash when it comes to government ethics. It is important that government ethics programs be administered by independent commissions. But independent agencies often do what they can not to be subject to a local government ethics commission.

It is clear which sort of independence is more important, but independent agencies still put their interest in self-regulation ahead of the public's interest in an effective, trustworthy ethics program. This has been a big issue recently in Jacksonville, Palm Beach County, and Broward County, Florida. And it was a big issue in Louisville four years ago when the Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) sued to have itself declared outside the metro ethics commission's jurisdiction when someone filed an ethics complaint against the MSD's executive director, chief engineer, and a board member. According to an article in the Courier-Journal, the MSD won its suit and its freedom from outside ethics rules and enforcement.

There are several problems with Houston's new ethics provisions, in addition to what I pointed out in my last blog post. Some of them are typical, some of them are unusual. The ethics reform ordinance is attached; see below; the old ethics ordinance can be found by clicking here and scrolling down on the left to Code of Ordinances Chapter 18).