The second report of the Chicago Ethics Reform Task Force came out this week (see my posts on the first report and on the ordinances passed in response to it). The report contains several excellent recommendations and some original solutions to problems. But it also makes recommendations that stop …

In this year of endless talk about voter fraud, there is not all that much talk about one area of fraud that has actually been proven to exist, and to make a difference:  absentee ballot fraud. This kind of fraud even comes with its own profession, the absentee ballot broker (boletera in southern F…

A New Use of a Nonprofit as a Conduit Pay to play appears to be as creative a field as cellphone apps. An article in the Washington Examiner on Sunday points to a new way to get developer money into an official's pockets via a nonprofit organization. A zoning agreement stipulated that the developer…