Ethics Commissions/Administration

Yesterday, four Pennsylvania state representatives, two from each of the major parties, announced a proposal to create a public integrity commission that would have greater powers than the current state ethics commission, and would jurisdiction over officials at all levels of government.

City Ethics' president and Jacksonville ethics officer, Carla Miller, is taking best practices to a new level in Florida. She is organizing a statewide local government ethics swap meeting, where local government ethics officials will share information and talk about swapping software and programs.

Yesterday, my attention was drawn to a new organization called Foundation for Ethics in Public Service, Inc., which operates as the website www.reportpubliccorruption.org. On February 11, its executive director, Leslie W. Merritt, Jr., a former North Carolina state auditor, sent out a statement to newspapers across the country about state and federal ethics commissions.

Update: June 7, 2010 (see below)

When people support ethics programs that feature toothless enforcement, reel off the names of the countries that support toothless enforcement of the UN Convention against Corruption (according to an article in this week's Economist):

Algeria
Angola
China
Egypt
Iran
Pakistan
Russia
Venezuela
Zimbabwe