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Who should be allowed to file an ethics complaint? Certainly any citizen of the jurisdiction. But what about multiple citizens of the jurisdiction? Should an ethics commission exclude a complaint from them?

This is what happened recently in Brookfield, CT, according to an article in the News-Times. A petition signed by a few hundred people in town was...

Here's a new role for an ethics commission:  mediator in a dispute between other government oversight offices. According to an article in the Advocate last week, New Orleans' ethics board has appointed two of its members to mediate in an ongoing dispute between the city's Inspector General and its new...

Over the last few decades, governments have privatized many of their functions. One function that governments have begun privatizing in recent years is lobbying higher-level governments. Since every government is at a higher level than a local government (think not just regional, state, and federal, but numerous agencies at each of these levels), local government has the most lobbying to do.

Most local government lobbyists are in-house (or officials do the lobbying themselves), but...

Update: January 22, 2014 (see below)

Yesterday, the Broward Bulldog, in Broward County, FL (home of Ft. Lauderdale), published an excellent investigative report on the lack of lobbying laws in Florida's 992 independent special districts, which together spend many billions of dollars of taxpayer money every year...

In preparation for the chapter on lobbying that I'm working on, I just finished reading a 2002 book entitled The Ethics of Lobbying from the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University (Georgetown UP). It's an excellent introduction to a number of issues involved in lobbying of the federal government, most of which are relevant at the local level, as well. The book is the result of a multi-year...

Some jurisdictions have an ethics provision entitled Prestige of Office that, among other things, limits work that officials can do outside of government. Here is the language that the Baltimore school district uses (this is essentially the same as the city government's Prestige of Office provision, but with the addition of the phrase "public position," which turns it into a basic misuse of office provision):

An official may not intentionally use the prestige of office or public...