City Related

Mayor Rahm Emanuel continues to make small government ethics improvements in Chicago. Yesterday, according to a city press release, the council passed five ethics reforms, all but one of them involving lobbyists. The principal reform is the creation of a searchable online lobbyist registration and reporting system.

The paths of justice have some odd twists to them. Consider these twists. As I wrote in a blog post almost exactly a year ago, both parties to a case involving a Baltimore council member's alleged acceptance of a bribe argued that a statutory provision entitled "Action for defamation against local government official" was not relevant to the case.

The power of the pen is great, and one place that it is especially powerful in the field of government ethics is in summaries and directions. Those who write summaries of ethics laws and directions for filing complaints or other forms can have an enormous effect on government ethics, either intentionally or negligently, by mischaracterizing ethics laws and procedures.

Update: September 27, 2011
According to Melissa Griffin's column in the Examiner yesterday, the board of supervisors' Government Audit and Oversight Committee met last week to discuss the civil grand jury report discussed below. The results of the committee consideration of the report are included after each relevant section below.

It's fascinating how different issues are important to local government officials in difference places at different times. I couldn't say that officials will always dig in their heels and fight this ethics provision, or that another ethics provision never raises an eyebrow.

It staggers the imagination how combative local government officials can sometimes be with respect to ethics commissions. A year ago, I wrote about a former Sioux Falls (SD) council member, Kermit Staggers, who attacked complaints filed by the city's ethics board as "frivolous" and attacked its procedures when it gave him two private, that is confidential, reprimands.