Skip to main content

Ethics Reform

Tweak or Landmark Reform?

According to an article in yesterday's Chicago Sun-Times, Illinois Gov. Quinn called the new ethics bill he signed a "landmark" change to the state's political culture. However, Patrick Collins, whom Quinn had named to chair the commission that recommended these ethics reforms and many more, called the new ethics provisions "tweaks to the system. ... What we always were advocating for was game-changing reform."

An Anti-Ethics Reform Rant Worth Reading

People frequently belittle government ethics reforms as meaningless window dressing intended to make politicians look like they're being ethical, something I have said myself in certain contexts. Yet it is worth reading an extreme view of this, which oddly comes from a journalist writing a blog that takes "an evangelical Christian viewpoint."