Gifts

A very lengthy article in yesterday's News Journal looks at the history of relations between Delaware legislators and Christopher Tigani, formerly the top executive with Delaware's top liquor distributor. The article provides an instructive look at corporate and personal influence.

The story is summed up in a former state senator's...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel continues to make small government ethics improvements in Chicago. Yesterday, according to a city press release, the council passed five ethics reforms, all but one of them involving lobbyists. The principal reform is the creation of a searchable online lobbyist registration and reporting system. This will...

It's nice when something you write about in a blog shows up on the front page of the New York Times the following day. Yesterday, in a post called "Privatization and Transparency," I discussed new types of privatization involving nonprofits, which raise new sorts of problems. One type of nonprofit operates government-funded facilities or programs, such as schools. These nonprofits are...

Last August, I wrote a blog post about the mayor of Tulsa accepting free legal services from an attorney who represented Tulsa in certain matters, that is, from a city contractor. The matter involved the council possibly filing charges against the mayor for allegedly lying about a federal police grant.

Due to poor language in the ethics code, and some poor interpretation, what is a fairly...

On December 6, according to an article on the Chicago Talks website, Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel promised that he would make many ethics reforms to “change the culture” of corruption and cronyism at City Hall.

Government ethics is dangerous to dating and weddings. That's the message of an article in Sunday's Palm Beach Post.

Because the proposed amendment to the Palm Beach County ethics code's gift provision, just...