It's Attack the Ethics Commission week once again, this time in New York State. According to an April 16 article in the Albany Times-Union, a mayor from one party filed a complaint against the deputy majority leader of the New York Senate, who is a member of the other party. The complaint is included below the article, and a statement by the mayor, about the filing, is quoted.

Fast forward to May 15, when the senate majority leader accused the state ethics commission of leaking the commission's letter to the respondent. What important information could possibly be in the letter to the respondent that was not already in the complaint?

Today, the New York Times ran a length investigatory report on Walmart's extensive bribery of local Mexican officials intended to rush through permits and zoning approvals, reduce environmental impact fees, and gain the allegiance of these officials.

The Independence of Investigators
The report raises a few important local government ethics issues. One is the independence of investigators. A preliminary investigation was done by Walmart's home investigation unit, but when it recommended an extensive investigation, Walmart executives turned the investigation over to Walmart de Mexico executives implicated in the bribery scheme. This was despite advice from Walmart International's general counsel that, “The wisdom of assigning any investigative role to management of the business unit being investigated escapes me.”

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).