City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

Transparency & Disclosure October 20, 2014

Problems Relating to Secret Local Govt Pension Fund Agreements with Private Equity Firms

Gretchen Morgenson's investigative piece in yesterday's New York Times is extremely disturbing. According to her research, local and state government pension funds have taken huge risks, and then allowed them to be hidden from the public, by signing agreements with private equity firms that make th…

October 15, 2014

Misleading Orange County (CA) Ethics Initiative

According to an editorial in the Orange County (CA) Register this week, Orange County citizens will soon vote on an initiative that would make their county the second one to turn its campaign finance program over to the state's Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). But the initiative's wordin…

Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play October 14, 2014

How a Huge Corporation's Political Spending Can Change a City's Ethics Environment

In the last few years, one of the biggest topics in the general area of government ethics, including campaign finance, lobbying, and transparency, has been the effect of huge campaign contributions by corporations and billionaires, which has become increasingly doable pursuant to a series of U.S. S…

Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play October 11, 2014

How to Identify and Prevent Pay to Play

An article today in the New York Times describes a situation that sheds light on pay to play. It involves the Westchester County (NY) county executive, who is getting special scrutiny because he is running for governor and has, throughout his career, as well as in this election, been openly critica…

October 9, 2014

Corruption Surrounding the Building of Barriers in Venice, Italy

The former chair of the Venice in Peril Fund wrote a disturbing piece for the September 25 issue of the New York Review of Books about corruption in Venice. This corruption derived largely from a major project: the building of flood protection barriers, known as MOSE. Although this project was lar…

Resources & Learning October 7, 2014

The Consequences of Academic Noninvolvement in the Reform of Government Conflicts of Interest Programs

An essay of mine has appeared in the new issue of the journal Public Integrity, a special issue entitled "Changing of the Guard: The 75th American Society for Public Administration Anniversary Symposium: Visions and Voices of Ethics in the Profession" (Fall 2014, Vol. 16, No. 4). Since the journal …

October 3, 2014

CA Gov. Brown Points to 50-Year-Old Essay To Defend His Veto of Ethics Reforms

This week, California governor Jerry Brown had to go back fifty years to find someone who agreed with his view of government ethics reform. According to an article in the San Diego Mercury-News, in vetoing ethics reforms that "sought to limit the types of gifts politicians can accept and force lawm…

Ethics Commissions & Administration September 18, 2014

When Is an Ethics Commission "Independent"?

Ethics commissions appointed by local legislative bodies, mayors, or county executives are often referred to as "independent commissions." I don't believe that these commissions should be considered "independent," because those who select the EC members are under the members' jurisdiction and, in f…

September 16, 2014

Orange County CA Supervisors Again Ignore Grand Jury Recommendations

According to an article Sunday on the Voice of OC website, the Orange County, CA legislative body has drafted a response to the second grand jury report in a year, which recommended the creation of a county ethics program "to monitor and enforce campaign finance and reporting and lobbyist reporting…

September 12, 2014

A Bullying Head of a Local Fiefdom

In an article in the New York Times this Monday, the Robeson County (NC) district attorney described his predecessor's bullying ways, which are typical of those of an individual who heads a local fiefdom: “He is a bully, and that’s the way he ran this office. People were afraid of him. Lawyers were…

Subscribe to