Enforcement & Complaints

What can a citizen do when a local government official falsely impugns her reputation and retaliates against her due to her opposition to a matter the official supports? The City Ethics Model Code has a provision that deals with an official falsely impugning a citizen's reputation, but very few eth…

The defense of legislative immunity is not limited to city councilors and county commissioners. It also can be used by non-legislative officials acting in a legislative way. It may be used by planning and zoning board members and officials, school board members, and a variety of other officials inv…

It appeared to be a sign of sheer desperation when former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich's attorney, in his closing argument last week, used as a defense the fact that Blagojevich isn't "the sharpest knife in the drawer." But actually this is a real issue, at least in government ethics. It is of…

Updates: August 4 and 9, 2010 (see below) I was just saying to someone the other day that the worst offenses in local government ethics do not involve money. The worst offenses in local government ethics involve intimidation, which causes people to lose their peace of mind, their reputations, and t…

“How he is treated is important. He’s going to fight for his name. Rather than accept language he disagrees with, he would rather fight it out. This is his life.” These are the words of an adviser to congressman Charles Rangel about why his month-long settlement negotiations with the House Committe…

Update: October 22, 2010 (see below) Recently, I wrote a blog post on the political use of ethics complaints and the manipulation of the press. Yesterday, the third circuit court of appeals effectively, and I think wrongly, disagreed with one of my principal arguments in that post, and therefore ca…

There's a good opinion piece by Austin American-Statesman columnist Jason Embry this week on the political use of ethics complaints. The instances of abuse of the ethics process is what has led many jurisdictions to prohibit any mention of filing an ethics complaint and to prohibit the filing of et…

When it comes to ethics fines, it's hard to satisfy anyone. Fines are usually too large or too small, depending on whom you ask. No one likes to be punished, and no one likes the guilty to get off easy. So what is an ethics commission to do? This week there have been two newspaper articles featurin…

Ethics charges are often not the end, but rather the beginning of a process to improve government ethics. Take a recent instance in Los Angeles. According to a City News Service article last week, a construction director for the Los Angeles Unified School District "was charged with nine felony coun…

Can the government ethics enforcement community learn anything from a successful experiment in the crime enforcement field? With tongue only partly in cheek, I will try to show ways in which the government ethics enforcement community could learn a thing or two. This week's New York Times Magazine …