Complaints/ Investigations/Hearings

According to an article in the News-Tribune, the governor of Missouri recently signed an ethics bill (SB 844) that made many changes in the state's ethics and campaign finance programs, and failed to make others, such as a campaign contribution limit, which the legislature...

In researching a recent ethics complaint in Harlingen, Texas (pop. 67,000), I came across some disturbing ethics matters. The most disturbing can be seen from the minutes of the city development corporation's September 29, 2009 meeting (pp. 3-4).

Update: October 22, 2010 (see below)

Recently, I wrote a blog post on the political use of ethics complaints and the manipulation of the press. Yesterday, the third circuit court of appeals effectively, and I think wrongly, disagreed with one of my principal arguments in that post, and therefore came to the wrong decision.

A Poor Approach to Being Ethical
It's great when candidates talk up acting ethically. But it's going too far, and setting a bad precedent, when a candidate takes a lie-detector test in which he says that he never engaged in unethical activities in private- or public-sector work, as reported in the Moultrie (GA) Observer.

There's an interesting issue at the heart of a judicial inquiry into possible misconduct by the mayor of Mississauga, Ontario. The council sought the inquiry to “investigate any supposed breach of trust or other misconduct of a Member of Council, an employee of the municipality or person having a contract with the municipality” and to inquire into “any matter connected with the good government of the municipality or the conduct of any part of its public business." In short, it is an open-ended...

A situation in the city of Alameda, CA once again points out that government officials dealing with the possibly unethical conduct of other government officials is not a good thing.

According to an article today in the San Francisco Chronicle, the city of Alameda asked the city's outside counsel to investigate whether a council member had disclosed confidential...