Blogs

The independent selection of EC members is a great thing for making a government ethics program appear independent of those under its jurisdiction and for ensuring that an ethics commission remains fully stocked with members. But how this selection process is actually accomplished matters, too.

There is good and bad in the Palm Beach County (FL) ethics commission selection process, as can be seen from recent events,...

A month ago, I wrote a blog post about the Broward County (FL) inspector general's recommendations for ethics reform. A principal recommendation was to require all local officials, who are under the county ethics program's jurisdiction, to seek ethics advice from an ethics officer rather than from their city attorneys.

According to...

I'm currently reading a classic political science book about urban politics, Who Governs? by Robert Dahl. Who governs? is a question that is not asked often enough in local government ethics. It is not enough for an ethics program to have jurisdiction over officials and employees. It needs to have jurisdiction over those who actually govern the community, no matter what their position. I raised this issue in...

Colorado has an extremely dysfunctional ethics program, everyone is complaining about it, but approaches to fixing it are sometimes just as dysfunctional. A year ago, I wrote three blog posts about its problems and people's complaints (total gift ban; lack of independence, including ethics commission members...

Banning meals provided by lobbyists was among the proposals up for discussion Tuesday by the [Missouri] House General Laws Committee. Nearby was a lunch spread for committee members, provided by a lobbyist.

—the beginning of an article by Virginia Young of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Recently, the hiring of lobbyists to represent cities before state and federal governments and agencies has become controversial. Some people think this is an inappropriate use of taxpayer funds. I don't agree. However, the hiring of external lobbyists (as opposed to government officials who do the lobbying themselves) does raise some government ethics issues, because it adds to the mix highly politicized contractors.

This problem is exacerbated when there are laws limiting or...