Independent agencies are more likely than regular government agencies to get into trouble, because they are usually more closed and less supervised. And yet officials too often listen to agencies' calls for independence from ethics programs, as if the "independence" meant something positive that should be respected, rather than that the agencies are unsupervised and unaccountable. An independent agency's independence is only something positive when it is a watchdog agency, like an ethics commission, auditor, or inspector general.

What does it mean to be a "high-caliber" nominee for a position on a local ethics commission? Does it mean someone who has been in law enforcement, a prosecutor or judge whose presence sends the message that the law will be enforced? Or does it mean someone who appears to be independent of the local government officials who are under the commission's jurisdiction?

Update: July 17, 2012 (see end of this post)