Campaign Finance

It all started with the indictment, on charges of bribery and theft, of a Fats, Oil & Grease inspector back in November 2010. It led to an 83-page grand jury report in August 2013, which set out the misconduct involving the DeKalb County (GA) Department of Watershed Management (DWM) procurement process, and made recommendations not only for indictments, but also for an...

The Privatization of Economic Development
A fascinating report has just been published by Good Jobs First, entitled "...

A new online collaborative effort in the field of campaign finance was launched yesterday. Known as the SUN Center (SUN stands for States’ Unified Network, even though it includes cities or, at this point, city), it is intended, according to a press release announcing the launch, for the sharing of "innovative ideas, strategies and legislation related...

There is a fact of life that is very hard for many local elected officials to admit:  most of the campaign contributions given to incumbents and serious challengers come from two sources:  those seeking special benefits from the government and those who work for the government (and their unions). If both of these groups were not permitted to make campaign contributions, local elections would be contested with very little money, unless the government instituted a public campaign financing...

Yesterday, a felony complaint was issued against William Rapfogel, the CEO of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, a large nonprofit social service agency that received millions of dollars in grants and contracts from New York City, New York state, and the federal government. One of the charges is that the nonprofit made large campaign contributions to city and state...

"None of the unions ever asked me for a quid pro quo. They, like anyone else who is giving, they just want to know their points get heard. They are not asking that you agree with it. They have said, ‘We don’t expect you to agree on everything. We understand it is a negotiation.’”

—Toni Harp, candidate for mayor of New Haven, CT, on the $48,000 she and the alderpersons effectively on her ticket were given by labor unions (...