City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

Transparency & Disclosure November 10, 2015

San Jose Shows the Importance of Ongoing Lobbying Disclosure

In my chapter on local lobbying, I argue that even quarterly disclosure of lobbying activities is not sufficiently timely and that lobbyists' disclosures should be supplemented by the disclosures of high-level officials. According to an article in Sunday's San Jose Mercury News, in San Jose, CA lob…

November 5, 2015

Seattle Public Campaign Financing Initiative Passes

Seattle's public campaign financing Initiative I-122 passed easily on Tuesday. It should prove to be an excellent experiment in campaign finance vouchers, an idea that has been batted about at the federal level, as well. Here's how it works. Each election cycle (two years) the city's ethics commiss…

Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play October 28, 2015

Austin Lobbying Reform and Opposition to It

Considering that it reflects a typical approach to lobbying, it is valuable to look at the language of a resolution to improve Austin's lobbying oversight program (attached; see below). It is also valuable to consider the opposition to this resolution by a coalition of local architects, engineers, …

Conflicts of Interest October 23, 2015

Local Agency Lobbyists Should Register as Lobbyists

Rarely do agencies' own lobbyists get caught by their agency breaking agency rules on communications. This is what just happened in Houston. According to an article last night on Houston's Channel 13 website, an individual who, under a contract, lobbies state and federal officials for the Metropoli…

October 22, 2015

Lobbyist Miscellany

Campaign Vendors Lobbying Their Candidates According to an article in the Capital (of DE) Gazette, an assistant state's attorney for Anne Arundel County, whose political firm was paid $200,000 by the successful candidate for county executive, is also a lobbyist for a company involved in a stormwate…

October 16, 2015

Lobbyist Miscellany

Lobbyist Extortion According to an article yesterday on Columbus, Ohio's NBC 4 website, a lobbyist for a red-light camera company pleaded guilty to charges that he solicited campaign contributions for elected city officials from his client by creating the impression that the money was needed to bri…

October 15, 2015

Fraud and Ethics Enforcement

Criminal enforcement of ethics violations usually involves fraud, and less so honest services fraud (which was essentially misuse of office) now that it has been essentially limited to bribery. And yet ethics enforcement rarely involves fraud, because ethics codes do not have fraud provisions. This…

Conflicts of Interest October 9, 2015

Chicago Revolving Door Scheme with Indirect Benefits

A former head of Chicago's public school system has said she will plead guilty to a scheme to take hundreds of thousands of dollars, airfare, meals, and baseball tickets in exchange for steering more than $23 million in no-bid contracts to her former employer, an educational consulting and training…

Ethics Codes & Reform October 1, 2015

Attempt to Make Gift Bans Unconstitutional in KY

It was only a matter of time before the U.S. Supreme Court's campaign finance opinions (and decisions at the trial and appellate level that have applied them to other situations) would be used to argue that conduct prohibited or limited by government ethics provisions are also protected as free spe…

Ethics Codes & Reform September 8, 2015

Legal Ethics Should Not Be Confused with Government Ethics

Many local government attorneys insist that government ethics laws should not apply to them because they are covered by legal ethics rules. In fact, some government ethics codes have express exceptions for attorneys. I have always insisted that the two are very separate and should not be confused w…

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