Los Angeles City Ethics Commission

The Los Angeles City Ethics Commission is a semi-independent agency authorized and funded by Los Angeles voters to administer and enforce a governmental ethics ordinance for the City of Los Angeles. The CEC is also responsible for administering and enforcing the City's lobbying and campaign finance laws.

I would like to hear how many people have had similar experiences to the one I will describe below, and what people think should be done in response.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court delivered a blow to municipal government employee rights in its decision in Garcetti et al v.

Terry L. Price's new book, Understanding Ethical Failures in Leadership (Cambridge University Press, 2006), provoked in me a great deal of thinking about what is behind the ethical failures of elected and appointed municipal officials. I will be talking in terms of officials, but Price speaks only in terms of leaders in general, with an emphasis on governmental leaders. His central thesis is that such ethical failures are fundamentally cognitive rather than volitional, that is, they come not out of selfishness or will, but out of mistaken beliefs and limited knowledge.

Creating ethics code takes time, expert says

Carla Miller, an ethics officer for Jacksonville, Fla., and a former federal prosecutor, tells city officials, "You are in the upper echelon because you are at least struggling with it."

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, May 19, 2006

Population: 2.2 million
Web site: www.co.miami-dade.fl.us/ethics

COGEL Task Force -- Local and Municipal Ethics Initiatives

Members

CHAIR: Carla Miller, Ethics Officer, City of Jacksonville, Florida VICE-CHAIR: John Steiner, Austin, TX Ethics Commission Mark Davies, New York City Conflict of Interest Board Helen Valkavich, City of San Antonio, TX Robert Meyers, Miami/Dade Ethics Commission Leeann Pelham, Los Angeles City Ethics Commission