Disclosure

Transparency in government should not be limited only to officials.
Disclosure rules should also apply to everyone seeking special benefits from government, such as
contracts, permits, or grants. For one thing, without transparency
on both sides of every transaction, it is impossible for the public or officials to know if
there are any conflicts that particular officials need to deal with.<br>
<br>
One popular way to get around transparency is the shell company. A
company can easily be set up so that its ownership is secret. This

Here are three instances of ethics reform that, I hope,
would not happen if someone involved had read the chapter on ethics reform in my
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/ethics%20book&quot; target="”_blank”">Local Government Ethics Program book</a>.<br>
<br>

Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote an excellent <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/sunday-review/hard-truths-about-discl…; target="”_blank”">op-ed
piece for the New York <i>Times</i></a> last Sunday. It was about
disclosure, more specifically about the way disclosure sometimes
neither leads to more transparency, nor prevents what it is intended
to prevent. In the government ethics situation, that would mean

I make a great effort to be nonpartisan in choosing what and whom I
write about. I am an unaffiliated voter who
believes in nonpartisan local government. But yesterday, the Republican
Party took a strong stand against government ethics and, in its most
important statement in years, totally ignored it.<br>
<br>

Here's a good followup to <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/officials-possibly-conflicting-intere…; target="”_blank”">yesterday's
blog
post</a> about a conflict of interest in Tucson. In that post, I
argued that annual financial disclosure makes it clear that an
official's basic interests are public information, and said, "The goal

"Ceremonial function" is one of those terms that is found in many local
government ethics codes (but not the <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/full-text-model-ethics-code&quot; target="”_blank”">City
Ethics Model Code</a>). However, it is rarely defined except, occasionally, in advisory opinions. The term is generally used to exclude certain gifts from
being either disclosed or considered gifts at all. The result is lots

In
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/harassment-and-intimidation-governmen…
recent
blog post on Maricopa County</a>, I referred to the problem of
harassment and intimidation by government officials against other
government
officials and employees. I have also referred in the past to the even
more
serious problem of harassment, intimidation, and ad hominem attacks by

When it comes to ethics fines, it's hard to satisfy anyone. Fines
are usually too large or too small, depending on whom you ask. No one likes to be punished, and no one likes the guilty to get off easy. So what is an ethics
commission to do?<br>
<br>
This week there have been two newspaper articles featuring opposite
ends of the fine spectrum.<br>
<br>

According to <a href="http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-05-03/story/push-toughened-lobb…; target="”_blank”">an
article in the Jacksonville <i>Times-Union</i></a> this week, former
Jacksonville council member and current lobbyist Ginny Myrick said, in
response to lobbying reforms suggested by Jacksonville ethics officer,
and City Ethics' president, Carla Miller, that (not exact words) "it is

Pennsylvanians have, for some time, been entertained with a scandal called Bonusgate,
which involves state legislative staff not only being used for
campaigns, but getting bonuses, which makes a common practice appear
even uglier. The ugliness has recently increased in intensity: 
defense counsel for two of the legislators is accusing the attorney
general (who instituted the criminal actions) of doing the very
same thing, without the bonuses. And the
attorney general, of a different political party than the great
majority of the