Complaints/ Investigations/Hearings

A settlement in a Massachusetts ethics proceeding can be used as an educational opportunity in several ways.

Government ethics proceedings are usually not very satisfying for those involved. Individuals rarely get to tell the entire story from their point of view. Nor do they profit from hearing how others saw the situation or experienced the events. The format for ethics proceedings is similar to the criminal justice system, with charges, a prosecution, witnesses, documents, and the ethics commission as jury. Or a settlement is reached, the equivalent of a plea bargain, and no story is told at all.

An eye-opening report was published this week by the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut. The report was based on a survey of all the state's police departments regarding the filing of complaints. Although complaints filed by the public against police officers rarely involve conflicts of interest, some of the findings are relevant to government ethics.

Yesterday, at the annual conference of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL), the only association of state and local government ethics professionals, Judge Anthony Wilhoit was given the COGEL Award, which is given annually to someone who has "made a significant, demonstrable, and positive contribution to the fields of campaign finance, elections, ethics, freedom of information or lobbying for a significant period of time." As the executive director of the Kentucky Legislative Ethics Commission since 1997, Judge Wilhoit has certainly made a substan

The headline of a New York Times article today is, "Ethics in Play, Voters Oust Incumbents Under Inquiry." One's first impression upon reading the article is that people are throwing unethical politicians out of office. The system is working. But upon further thought, it doesn't seem to be working very well at all.

An interesting case in Iowa raises questions about the purposes behind post-employment, or "revolving door," provisions, including whom they are supposed to protect and why.

The reason I haven't written about George Anderson is that he has done too much, and been too controversial, for me to get a handle on him. In other words, laziness. He has been an ethics and non-ethics watchdog in Georgia for many years, filing numerous ethics and other sorts of complaints both at the state and at the local level. He heads an organization called Ethics in Government, which does not seem to have a website.

Last week, I wrote blog posts about how Chicago's ethics program needs more independence and more transparency than the Ethics Reform Task Force recommended.

A number of important issues arise from a case before the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board (ECDB) last week. The issues include: (1) how to treat an inadequate complaint; (2) how to treat a complainant in a proceeding, and (3) what to do when an ethics code and rules may be inadequate to a situation where there is a strong appearance of impropriety.

Is it important that an ethics complaint be based on information that is known personally? Some ethics codes require this. But the fact is that many ethics violations are done secretly. It can take some serious, professional investigation to obtain the facts and relevant documents. This is why investigations by journalists are so valuable. What they uncover is often used by citizens, good government organizations, and others as the basis for an ethics complaint.