Ethics Commissions/Administration

Ethics commissions appointed by local legislative bodies, mayors,
or county executives are often referred to as "independent
commissions." I don't believe that these commissions should be considered
"independent," because those who select the EC members are under the
members' jurisdiction and, in fact, are the people most likely to come before them. These EC members are perceived as biased toward
their appointing party, which is far from "independence."<br>
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The Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL), an association of
American and Canadian practitioners in the areas of conflicts of
interest, campaign finance, transparency, elections, and lobbying,
is looking into the possibility of offering certification programs
in these areas. I assume the courses would be both about the topics

Reading in <i>The Economist</i> a distinction made by Paul
Kingsnorth, a leader of the uncivilization movement, a response to
climate change, made me wonder whether it is also important with
respect to government ethics. His distinction is between a "problem"
and a "predicament." A "problem" is something that can be solved. A
"predicament" is something that must be endured, for which there is
no real solution. When faced with a predicament, the appropriate

Can local legislators be trusted with the discretion to reimburse
their colleagues for legal fees in ethics proceedings? This question
is raised by a decision of the Wellington, FL council a few weeks
ago.<br>
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According to <a href="http://gotowncrier.com/2014/03/letter-the-rule-of-law/&quot; target="”_blank”">an
editorial in the Town-Crier Online</a>, Wellington's mayor was

Many local legislative bodies have ethics committees, even where there
is an ethics commission. The reason for these self-regulatory committees is that
these bodies have their own codes of conduct that go
beyond conflicts of interest, and which are enforced, discussed, and
amended separate from the city or county's ethics program. Some local ethics programs consist of nothing more than a council ethics committee and code of conduct, but that situation is not the topic of this blog post.<br>
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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 (<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/total-gift-bans-and-legal-defense-fun…; target="”_blank”">total

Although citizen participation is not part of government ethics,
it's important to keep reminding ourselves that it is central to
government ethics, because it is a principal goal of government
ethics programs.<br>
<br>
Officials' ethical misconduct undermines citizen trust and
participation, but there are also other obstacles that get in the
way. One of these is the lack of opportunity to express opinions in

<b>Updates:</b> February 5 and April 16, 2014 (see below)<br><br>
<a href="http://blog.nj.com/njv_guest_blog/2014/01/chris_christies_pick_for_ethi…; target="”_blank”">Here
is a must-read <i>Star-Ledger</i> op-ed piece by Paula Franzese</a>, a professor at
Seton Hall Law School and former chair of the New Jersey Ethics
Commission (2006 to 2010). She provides a short history of the

This is the third of four blog posts on <a href="http://static.lobbytools.com/bills/2014/pdf/0606.pdf&quot; target="”_blank”">Florida
Senate Bill 606</a> (attached; see below), one of the worst ethics
reform bills I have ever read.<br>
<br>
This post considers just one sentence of the bill: "A political subdivision is prohibited from
imposing additional or more stringent standards of conduct and

Crowdfunding is a 21st-century way of funding projects that are not
being funded by the government, the stock market, venture
capitalists, or even angel investors. But it's really not as
21st-century as people think. For example, the Statue of Liberty's
pedestal was crowdfunded back in 1885 (without the Internet, the
crowdfunding was led by Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher of New York
<i>World</i> newspaper).<br>
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Very few local government ethics programs are funded at all, and