County Related

This week, according to an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cuyahoga County (which includes Cleveland) passed a new ethics code, largely based on the recommended code drafted in October by the Code of Ethics Workgroup, set up by the Cuyahoga County Transition Advisory Group Executive Committe…

Update: March 19, 2011 (see below) Last December I wrote a long blog post about the pay-to-play culture of Prince George's County, Maryland. The new county executive and the county's state representatives appear to have been working hard to make changes to end this pay-to-play culture, although you…

Cook County assessor Joseph Berrios is becoming a regular character in this blog (see below for prior posts on him). This time he is declaring unconstitutional a law passed by the county to limit his fundraising from lawyers who appeal property tax assessments. And he has the support of a questiona…

Term limits, the recession, a new kind of governmental district, and a drive to save and manage local parks have all contributed to a fascinating ethics situation in Pierce County, Washington, home of Tacoma. Just last year I stayed in Pierce County and visited some of these parks, so this story is…

You know you're doing a pretty poor job with government ethics when a grand jury recommends that you be all but abolished. This is the case with the Broward County School Board, according to a report published on Frday. It concludes, on p. 48: Unfortunately based on the history of this Board as an …

Transparency, although not generally part of a local ethics code, is central to a local government's ethics environment. A lack of transparency is both a tell-tale sign that things are wrong, and an impediment to discussing ethics issues and enforcing ethics violations. Unfortunately, ethics codes …