Enforcement/Penalties

There's a lot of ethics news from San Diego today. First, the judge in the San Diego campaign finance case has clarified his ruling.

Second, the case involving the former president of the Center City Development Corp. is going to a hearing before the San Diego ethics...

The ethics war in San Diego is heating up. It has escalated from elected officials pointing out problems they have with the city's ethics commission to the future existence of the EC. The latest battle presents an excellent window into the mindset of those who oppose government ethics, especially, in this case, the enforcement of campaign finance rules.

Cheryl Forchilli, chair of the Florida Commission on Ethics (which deals with local government ethics), wrote a must-read op-ed piece that appeared on the Florida Thinks blog yesterday.
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Many local government ethics codes have a provision that, when officials publicly give personal opinions rather than the government's position, requires them to clearly state that they are not representing the local government. Here's the one from the ethics code in Santa Clarita (CA) where, according to an...

"My e-mail boxes are full of angry letters about [former Baltimore mayor] Dixon's retirement package being left intact. The deal to resolve this case and get Ms. Dixon out of office seems to have sparked more public emotion than the mayor's transgressions." (Dan Rodricks' column in the Baltimore Sun)

One of the ugliest aspects of local government ethics is the desire for...

Can the government ethics enforcement community learn anything from a successful experiment in the crime enforcement field? With tongue only partly in cheek, I will try to show ways in which the government ethics enforcement community could learn a thing or two.

This week's New York Times Magazine ran an excellent piece by Jeffrey Rosen on a...