Ethics Reform

Two big local ethics/election stories come from Contra Costa, CA and Tallahassee, FL.

Ethics Reform Package Features a Different Sort of Public Campaign Financing Program
According to an article this morning on the Tallahassee Democrat website, by a 2-1 margin Tallahassee voters approved a charter amendment that will (1) create a...

This was a project that was helped by Represent.US and supported by citizen groups from right to left. I worked on the drafting of the referendum language. Here is today's press release from Represent.US:

An essay of mine has appeared in the new issue of the journal Public Integrity, a special issue entitled "Changing of the Guard: The 75th American Society for Public Administration Anniversary Symposium: Visions and Voices of Ethics in the Profession" (Fall 2014, Vol. 16, No. 4). Since the journal is published commercially, I am not permitted to share my essay with you. So I will do the next best thing: ...

This week, California governor Jerry Brown had to go back fifty years to find someone who agreed with his view of government ethics reform. According to an article in the San Diego Mercury-News, in vetoing ethics reforms that "sought to limit the types of gifts politicians can accept and force lawmakers to disclose the names of groups that...

According to an article Sunday on the Voice of OC website, the Orange County, CA legislative body has drafted a response to the second grand jury...

In a an op-ed in the Daily Kos last Friday, Janos Marton — special counsel to New York state's recent Moreland Commission on state-level corruption — makes an excellent point about one of the problems involved in the criminal enforcement of government ethics :