Self-Regulation

Chicago's Legislative IG
The battle continues in Chicago over government ethics authority and funding. According to the cover letter to the legislative inspector general's semi-annual report dated August 22, 2014 (attached; see below), the IG's office has expended its 2014 budget and the city council is not willing to provide it with more funds. The council has also transferred campaign finance authority from the IG's office back to the ethics board, over the opposition of both the...

Good news and bad news about lobbying from New York City's new mayor. The good news, according to a recent article on the Capital New York website, is that the mayor has said that his administration will disclose "substantive" meetings that members of his administration conduct with lobbyists. This is, he says, a practice he followed when he was the...

Sometimes even a wrongheaded ethics complaint can do good, by showing how wrongheaded a town's government ethics program is.

According to an editorial in The Day this week, the head of a local political party, Independence for Montville, filed an ethics complaint alleging that a former council member who owns a hot dog stand pushed to have the town's street vendor law changed so that street...

Many government ethics professionals don't like waivers. I think they're valuable. Basically, they are requests for an advisory opinion in which the official recognizes that certain conduct would constitute an ethics violation, but wants a determination that he can engage in the conduct due to special circumstances. The result of such a determination is the creation of a new, narrow exception to a rule. This is a good way of preventing bad unforeseen consequences of a rule. But waivers must be...

Another day, another grand jury report recommending government ethics reform. This report (attached; see below) comes from Orange County, NY, a county northwest of New York City, whose biggest town is Newburgh and whose most famous towns include the very different Tuxedo and Kiryas Joel.

The report criminally exonerates the county legislator who is its subject, because he did a couple things right:  he sought ethics advice from the ethics board, and he disclosed his employment with...

Can local legislators be trusted with the discretion to reimburse their colleagues for legal fees in ethics proceedings? This question is raised by a decision of the Wellington, FL council a few weeks ago.

According to an editorial in the Town-Crier Online, Wellington's mayor was found by the county ethics commission to have accepted an illegal gift to his defense fund, was sent a letter of...