Complaints/ Investigations/Hearings

The reason I haven't written about George Anderson is that he has done too much, and been too controversial, for me to get a handle on him. In other words, laziness. He has been an ethics and non-ethics watchdog in Georgia for many years, filing numerous ethics and other sorts of complaints both at the state and at the local level. He heads an organization called Ethics in Government, which does not seem to have a website.

When an ethics watchdog organization was founded primarily...

This is the first of a series of looks at the ethics programs of smaller cities, towns, and counties. These local governments have the resources to create an independent, comprehensive ethics program, but they rarely do. It is valuable to look at both the good ideas and the bad ideas in the programs they have chosen to create.

I will start with League City, Texas, whose new ordinance dealing with electronic communications...

Now that I am no longer administrator of the New Haven Democracy Fund, a public campaign financing program, I can once again write about ethics issues that arise in New Haven. An interesting issue arose when, according to an article in Monday's New Haven Register, a member of the city's ethics board took a part-time job with the city. The questions this raises are (1)...

Last week, I wrote blog posts about how Chicago's ethics program needs more independence and more transparency than the Ethics Reform Task Force recommended. I couldn't have imagined better evidence to...

The worst recommendation in the Chicago ethics task force's second report (attached; see below) involves the role it wants the corporation counsel to play in the city's ethics program: prosecuting attorney.

I feel strongly that a corporation counsel's office should play no role in an ethics program. See the section of my book Local Government Ethics Programs...

Although the Chicago Ethics Reform Task Force, in its first report, came out strongly in favor of more transparency in government, in its second report it came out strongly in favor of what it calls "...