Who should be allowed to file an ethics complaint? Certainly any citizen of the jurisdiction. But what about multiple citizens of the jurisdiction? Should an ethics commission exclude a complaint from them? This is what happened recently in Brookfield, CT, according to an article in the News-Times.…

Settlements of ethics proceedings are usually a good thing for everyone involved. They save officials the cost of a proceeding and prevent officials from digging themselves deeper and deeper into defenses, denials, and cover-ups, which are usually more harmful to the public trust than any ethics vi…

I've been thinking about what I wrote in yesterday's blog post with respect to sanctioning police officers who knew about the disability scam but said nothing. The principal cause for this, besides each individual's self-interest, was a common uniformed department's conspiracy of silence, a loyalty…