Safra Working Papers | City Ethics

June 11, 2012

A New Government Ethics Report from a New Florida Organization

In recent years, Florida's elected officials have shown a great deal of leadership in the field of unethical and criminal misconduct. The state has a weak state ethics commission, which has jurisdiction over local officials, and until recently only one good local government ethics program, in Miami/Dade County (Jacksonville and Palm Beach County joined this list with ethics reform last year). The major voices in government ethics in Florida have, sadly, been grand juries.

Transparency & Disclosure March 17, 2010

A New Idea: Lifestyle Audits

Have you ever wondered how a local government department head can afford to live like a king on a $100,000 salary?

Ethics Commissions & Administration July 15, 2014

A New Local Ethics Program's First Matter Raises Some Important Issues

An excellent editorial yesterday by Dan Barton, editor of the Kingston (NY) Times, raises a few important issues relating to local government ethics proceedings.

According to Barton, Kingston's new ethics board dismissed a complaint from a city alderman that the mayor had violated the ethics code by hiring as an attorney for the city's local development corporation a lawyer with whom the mayor practiced as "of counsel."

Local Government Practice July 28, 2013

A New Local Government Ethics Term

Kudos to the editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for inventing a new local government ethics term in an editorial yesterday. The term is "dyscronia."

March 23, 2015

A New Mayoral Charity in San Diego

According to an article yesterday on the Voice of San Diego website, yet another mayoral pet charity has been created in San Diego, called One San Diego.

July 27, 2010

A New Proposal for a Pennsylvania Public Integrity Commission with Jurisdiction Over Local Government Officials

Yesterday, four Pennsylvania state representatives, two from each of the major parties, announced a proposal to create a public integrity commission that would have greater powers than the current state ethics commission, and would jurisdiction over officials at all levels of government.

September 18, 2008

A New Punch Line in Cook County's Patronage Joke

Today's big story comes to us from Cook County, Illinois, and although it's about whether a government lawyer has a conflict of interest, the matter falls into the area of government ethics in which Chicago and Cook County have led the way for decades: patronage.

Resources & Learning October 23, 2013

A New Report and New Book on State and Federal Ethical Misconduct

The Privatization of Economic Development

Ethics Commissions & Administration December 7, 2012

A New Report on the Ethics Programs of Florida Counties

On November 29, Florida State University’s LeRoy Collins Institute and the new good government group Integrity Florida released a report entitled "Florida Counties Bridge the Ethics Policy Gap", which analyzes the results of a survey of government ethics programs and reforms in 45 of Florida’s 67 counties.

Ethics Commissions & Administration November 11, 2013

A New Sort of Regional EC in Utah

In early 2009, I started out a blog post, "Type 'ethics' into the search line at utah.gov, and all that comes up is Archery Ethics Course Online." That is no longer true. In fact, the state legislature not only has an ethics commission, it even passed a local ethics commission act.

August 2, 2013

A New State Integrity Index Report

Two weeks ago, the Better Government Association-Alper Services Integrity Index was published, the first since 2008. It grades each state's conflicts of interest, freedom of information, open meetings, and whistleblower-protection laws.

February 4, 2015

A new Sunshine Law suit in Florida...

From the Miami Herald blog: Newspapers, advocates sue the governor and Cabinet for sunshine violation The Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, the Associated Press, a Tampa lawyer and a coalition of sunshine advocates filed a lawsuit late Tuesday alleging that Gov. Rick Scott and the Cabinet violated the state's open meeting laws when the governor unilaterally decided to "force the resignation" of former Florida Department of Law Enforcement Chief Gerald Bailey and they consented.

Conflicts of Interest October 18, 2008

A New Twist on Charity Abuse by Politicians

See below for two updates

I've written a lot about politicians' charities, and how they allow lobbyists and others to get around limits on campaign contributions. But an article in today's New York Times presents a new form of abuse of a politician's charities (although it's not as different as it first seems).

July 14, 2011

A New Twist to a Baltimore Legislative Immunity Case

The paths of justice have some odd twists to them. Consider these twists. As I wrote in a blog post almost exactly a year ago, both parties to a case involving a Baltimore council member's alleged acceptance of a bribe argued that a statutory provision entitled "Action for defamation against local government official" was not relevant to the case.

Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play September 10, 2017

A new way to influence elections without transparency

We are seeing the first detailed evidence of the tampering that went on during the 2016 campaign for U.S. President. This is a whole new category of "nasty" that allows people without scruples to feed false information into the mix without any transparency. In this article, the NY Times lays out a host of Facebook and Twitter advertising that was purchased (estimated at $100,000 in paid advertising) but sources were never revealed - as you might expect.

February 25, 2013

A New, But Very Weak Regional Ethics Program in Connecticut

[Note: I have made changes throughout this blog post, based on a February 25 e-mail message from the COG executive director]

It should feel good when a pet idea of yours becomes a reality. My pet idea is the regional ethics program, whose biggest successes have been of the countywide variety, such as Miami-Dade County and Palm Beach County, FL (there is also a Broward County program, but it is run by an inspector general). There are a few regional ethics commissions in Kentucky, and one in Northwest Indiana, but they don't really have ethics programs.

Resources & Learning February 22, 2009

A New, Improved Local Government Ethics Treasure Trove

What could provide a better education for local government ethics practitioners than reading through a greatly expanded 261-page list of all the cases the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board has decided or settled from 1992 through last week? The ethics provisions may not be the same as everywhere, but the problems usually are.

The summaries are organized by topic, but there's no table of contents. So here goes:

Conflicts of Interest June 30, 2011

A Ninth Circuit Decision on Legislative Immunity and Legislative Acts

Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit, in its decision in U.S. v Renzi, considered what constitutes a "legislative act" with respect to the constitutional Speech or Debate Clause, which provides legislative immunity to legislators by preventing the executive and judicial branches from investigating or hearing matters involving legislative acts.

Conflicts of Interest April 16, 2014

A One-Way Prohibition on Misuse of Office for Clients

On Monday, Anthony Man of the Sun-Sentinel wrote an excellent analysis of the lobbying elements of Florida Senate bill 846 (a copy of the bill is attached; see below), which was recently passed by the senate unanimously.

Ethics Commissions & Administration January 7, 2010

A Paean to a Local Ethics Commission

It's worth a look at Philadelphia columnist Dave Davies' last column after twenty-five years on the job. It's something rarely seen in the local government ethics world: a hymn of praise to a local ethics commission, which he calls "a watchdog that isn't afraid to bite."