Complaints/ Investigations/Hearings

Imagine this story. A mayor calls a group of local contractors and
developers to a closed meeting on furthering economic growth in the city. The
guests are given a welcome pack, and
in the welcome pack is a plain brown, unmarked envelope. The
mayor ran on a platform of stopping corruption, but the
contractors and developers have seen this happen before.
Politicians are all the same, they think.<br>
<br>
During the meeting, the mayor asks her guests to open the

<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/louisville-council-member-digs-ec-dec…; target="”_blank”">Three
months ago, I wrote</a> about an ethics commission decision asking
for the removal of a Louisville council member, and the start of
proceedings in the council to do just that. I noted that the council
member's reaction was pure denial and attack on the ethics
commission.<br>

When an ethics commission and its staff are at odds, and the commission
is dealing with complaints against high-level officials, it is always
best for everyone when those officials had nothing to do with the
selection of the ethics commission's members or its staff. In other
words, you never fully appreciate an EC's independence, in terms of its
selection process, until things get ugly. Things got ugly in Georgia
this week. <br>
<br>

It's important for ethics commissions to be prepared for the occasional
official who, along with his or her attorney, will do anything to stop
or at least delay its investigation, including attacks on the EC itself. A
good example of how relentless an official can be is John J. O'Connor,
now former head of the SUNY Research Foundation, whom I wrote about in <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/classic-example-closed-fiefdom">a

<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/57039333/Hogan-Report-on-RF&quot; target="”_blank”">A
report on the relationship between New York's state university system
(SUNY) and the SUNY Research Foundation (RF)</a> was published
yesterday. What makes it of interest to this blog is the way the report
emphasizes the personal nature of the management of the foundation,
which distributes nearly a billion dollars a year in research grants

<i>This blog post was partially rewritten on March 24, 2011 after communication with the EC's executive director.</i><br>
<br>
The actions of one member of <a href="http://klec.ky.gov/default.htm&quot; target="”_blank”">Kentucky's
state
legislative ethics commission</a> has undermined the public's view of the EC and of the state's lawyer

<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/16/AR20110…; target="”_blank”">Yesterday's
Washington Post has a long article</a> on a topic one would expect to find in a law review: the effect of the Constitution's Speech or Debate
Clause on the prosecution of members of Congress.<br>
<br>
The article starts out with a strong statement: "A constitutional clash

<b>Problematic Development</b><br>
According to <a href="http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20101129/OPINION03/11290301&quot; target="”_blank”">Harry
Themal's column in yesterday's <i>News Journal</i></a>,
the newly elected county executive of New Castle County (DE) wants to
review government processes "top-to-bottom." There is just one catch.

The spread of corruption from local to state to national is often
ignored. And when corruption is discovered,
there is much litigation. In fact, it's often hard to see corruption
clearly here in the U.S. That's
why the occasional look at corruption abroad is useful, like looking in
an only
slightly distorted mirror.<br>

There are three basic approaches to enforcing ethics laws: 
through ethics commissions, through the criminal process, and through
the ballot box. I strongly oppose using the criminal process for ethics
violations (see <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/497&quot; target="”_blank”">an
earlier blog post</a>), and feel that the ballot box is far too crude a
way to enforce ethics laws, especially considering that voters do not