County Related

Last September, I wrote a blog post about an ethics initiative in Palm Beach County, Florida. A response to numerous scandals, it featured an ethics pledge, primarily for government officials, and a successful attempt to get an independent ethics commission and inspector general for the county gove…

Update: May 12, 2010 (see below) According to an article in Tuesday's Sun-Sentinel, Broward County (FL) Commissioner Ilene Lieberman feels that the ethics code written by a special commission on ethics (most of whose members were selected by the commissioners individually) was "drafted without prop…

It's been four months since my latest update on San Bernardino County's failure to follow grand jury ethics reform recommendations with any action. An op-ed piece by Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, in this week's San Bernardino Sun calls for campaign contribution limits…

As I mentioned in a recent blog post, the Broward County (FL; home of Ft. Lauderdale) commissioners are seeking to have an ethics code (enforced by an inspector general; it's being drafted) apply to county employees, as well. For some reason, this not only must go to referendum, but must also be ap…

Many complex conflicts of interest involve the spouses and other close family members of local government officials, as can be seen in Broward County (FL, home of Ft. Lauderdale) according to an article in the Sun-Sentinel. These conflicts are often legally complex, but from the point of view of ci…

Worth taking a look at is the work of California Watch in disclosing the use of county party committees to launder campaign contributions far over the legal limits. The nonpartisan good government organization presents the data in three different forms: Contributors to county committees - Two-third…

In a recent blog post, I listed the suits filed by Maricopa County's sheriff Joe Arpaio and county attorney Andrew Thomas against other county officials during the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws conference right in the heart of Maricopa County. Well, it got worse. On the last day of the confer…