Ethics Codes

Gift Bans
In Sunday's Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, former state representative Roger Hines wrote a column with the title "What Does Corruptibility Have to Do with a Dollar Figure?" Hines considered the state's $100 limit on gifts from lobbyists. After talking about the value of lobbyists...

It's amazing how much local government ethics activity there is in this July. Here is a miscellany of issues that have arisen in just the last few days.

It is common for councils to engage in backsliding shortly after creating or improving a government ethics program. When there has been a scandal, councils often go further than they would like to go in establishing ethics rules and procedures. When attention to ethics matters has lessened, it often seems to be a good time to make the program more what council members would like, and this almost always means two things:  (1) making it easier for them to accept gifts and (2) making it harder for...

There is a great deal to be learned from the selection process for the new District of Columbia Board of Ethics and Government Accountability, which is effectively complete. Three weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about the nomination of Robert Spagnoletti to be chair of the new ethics board. I questioned this nomination of a former D.C. Attorney General (that is, city...

Possibly the most important single thing in government ethics is the recognition that just because something isn't required, it doesn't mean you can't do it, and that just because something is not expressly prohibited, it doesn't mean you can do it. This is an expanded version of what I've often talked about:  that, unlike most laws, ethics laws are minimum requirements.

I really like it, for example, when, even though the law does not require immediate disclosure of...

In recent years, Florida's elected officials have shown a great deal of leadership in the field of unethical and criminal misconduct. The state has a weak state ethics commission, which has jurisdiction over local officials, and until recently only one good local government ethics program, in Miami/Dade County (Jacksonville and Palm Beach County joined this list with ethics reform last year). The major voices in government ethics in Florida have, sadly, been grand juries.

The need...