Campaign Finance

Image by Joe Wu

Following up on the previous blog post, here is the first of two examples of local government ethics matters involving anonymity outside of an internet context.

An article in Thursday's Bangor Daily News discusses a state ethics commission investigation into anonymous...

According to an iLind.net blog post this week, the chair of the Honolulu Ethics Commission resigned on April 22. Although his letter of resignation provides no cause for the resignation, the chair apparently said that he had been asked to assist a mayoral...

According to an article in yesterday's Chicago Daily Observer, Cook County commissioner Tony Peraica has proposed a series of improvements to the ethics code. Here's a summary of the proposed amendments, taken from...

Is the partisanship of local government elections a government ethics issue? I think it is, partly.

(illustration from illegalsigns.ca, Toronto)

I haven't mentioned billboard companies in my blog. It's about time. Billboard companies can be a serious source of apparent impropriety and corruption in local government. And this is an important time for them, because things are changing in the billboard world. It's no longer mostly about old-fashioned billboards along highways. It's digital supergraphics on buildings and all sorts of 21st-century innovations that...

The mayor of a city of 46,000 people announces that the city would change its policy requiring annexation to obtain water and sewer service, and then negotiates an agreement with a developer to provide him with utilities. In the middle of the negotiations, the developer gives the mayor's campaign a $10,000 contribution. An ethics complaint is filed with the state ethics commission and, according to an...