City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

Ethics Commissions & Administration May 4, 2009

Legislative Immunity: The Courts Are Wrong to Not Distinguish Ethics Enforcement from Prosecution and Civil Suits

One thing that keeps striking me about the recent decisions in the legislative immunity cases relating to government ethics is how little they attempt to distinguish cases outside the ethics field from these cases in the ethics field. Is government ethics no different from criminal prosecution, no …

Ethics Codes & Reform May 2, 2009

Like Constitutions, Interpreting Ethics Codes Requires Understanding, Humility, and Transparency

Here's a short opinion piece by Walter Dellinger, head of the Office of Legal Counsel under Pres. Clinton. It's part of a series of such pieces that will appear in tomorrow's Washington Post. The opinions concern what Pres. Obama should be looking for in his first Supreme Court nominee. After Delli…

May 1, 2009

Judge Allows Employees to Vote for Boss as Mayor in Chicago Heights

Two days ago, I wrote about a Chicago Heights (IL) situation where two council members who work under a third council member were in a position to vote for their boss to be the city's mayor. A suit brought by a group of local ministers to prevent this from happening was dismissed, according to an a…

May 1, 2009

The Defense of the Nevada Legislative Immunity Amendment Falls Short

I listened yesterday to the testimony of Kevin Powers, a member of the Nevada Legislative Counsel's office, to the House Committee considering the legislative immunity amendment I discussed in yesterday's blog post. He was very impressive, with all the facts and laws at his fingertips. But his defe…

April 30, 2009

Municipal Ethics Task Force in CT Bows to Town Officials

Recently, the Connecticut Task Force on Municipal Ethics discussed a draft report. Neither in the report, nor in the discussion, is there anything about ethics training, the independence of ethics commissions, or financial disclosure. Advisory opinions were not included in the draft, but were added…

Conflicts of Interest April 29, 2009

Local Government Employees in Local Government Office

Electing local government employees to local government office can cause problems. There are constitutional protections against forbidding it, but there are conflict of interest arguments against doing it. According to an article in today's Southtown Star, in Chicago Heights (IL) a group of ministe…

April 29, 2009

www.transparency.org Video

Watch this very cool www.transparency.org video on corruption:

Ethics Commissions & Administration April 29, 2009

Ethics Commission Meetings -- Passivity Doesn't Cut It

How often should ethics commissions meet? The usual answer to that question is, As often as they need to. But how often is that? That depends on their responsibilities. If all they do is respond to complaints and requests for advisory opinions, then they need only meet when they receive one or the …

April 29, 2009

Illinois Reform Commission Report Is Out

Most of the Illinois Reform Commission's report, which was published yesterday, has little to do with local government ethics, but there is enough overlap to make it worth skimming through. The IRC was charged with recommending changes in the state's ethics and campaign finance programs. Of special…

Enforcement & Complaints April 28, 2009

Paper Tigers

Local government officials often defend halfway ethics reforms by saying that they're just the beginning, and that something is better than nothing. But halfway reforms are often effectively little more than nothing, especially in the area of enforcement. "Window dressing" is one term for such refo…

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