Ethics Codes & Reform

In a blog post two weeks ago, I welcomed an excellent, although sketchy, set of recommendations by a national law firm that amounted to a recommendation for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) to set up a full-fledged ethics program. According to an article in the Washington …

In one of my blog posts on the ethics task force's second report, I identified areas that the ethics task force ignored. The first was the low limits on fines. The mayor, in his recommendations, did not recommend increasing them. The second was the failure to include independent ("sister") agencies…

Ethics program independence is, as far as I'm concerned, the single most important issue in ethics reform. Nothing gains the public's trust as much as an ethics program that is independent from the officials over whom it has jurisdiction. It is clear from the second report of the Chicago Ethics Ref…

My second blog post on the Chicago ethics task force's second report identified what I considered to be its worst ideas. Mayor Emanuel's recommendations accepted its bad ideas just as much as its good ideas. I considered the task force's worst idea to be having the corporation counsel play the role…

The second round of Chicago ethics reform recommendations, based on the ethics task force's second report (attached; see below), have been proposed by Chicago's mayor Rahm Emanuel (click here to read a summary of the mayor's recommendations). The focus of this second round is on enforcement and oth…

A presidential election day is a good time to consider how vague, character-based ethics rules can be misused. According to an article in the October 27 Economist, the Iranian constitution, for example, requires a presidential candidate to have the attributes of "trustworthiness and piety." Iraq's …

Independent agencies, especially those with lots of money to spend and contracts to enter into, require not just ethics policies, but a comprehensive, independent ethics program. This rarely acknowledged fact has been made clear once again by an external audit of an agency that proved completely un…

This is the first of a series of looks at the ethics programs of smaller cities, towns, and counties. These local governments have the resources to create an independent, comprehensive ethics program, but they rarely do. It is valuable to look at both the good ideas and the bad ideas in the program…

A front-page article in yesterday's New York Times provides an excellent portrait of a government official who, although doing much good work, made it all about himself and those with whom he has special relationships. Although his misconduct caught up with him only when it took the form of the all…

Here are three instances of ethics reform that, I hope, would not happen if someone involved had read the chapter on ethics reform in my Local Government Ethics Program book. Copying a Local Town's Code According to an article in yesterday's Houston Chronicle, the town of Pearland, TX did ethics re…