Enforcement/Penalties

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 "...

A number of important issues arise from a case before the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board (ECDB) last week. The issues include: (1) how to treat an inadequate complaint; (2) how to treat a complainant in a proceeding, and (3) what to do when an ethics code and rules may be inadequate to a situation where there is a strong appearance of impropriety.

(Note: This post has been revised, based on a response from Steve Berlin, executive director of Chicago's ethics board. I had made the silly assumption that the underlined language in the ethics reform ordinance was new. It turns out that much of that language has been there for some time. So I've deleted some comments and made changes to others.)

Recently, the Chicago council passed a series of ethics reforms (attached; see below) in response to the first report of the city...

I believe that an ethics commission/ethics officer approach to local government ethics is far better than an inspector general approach. The simultaneous creation of an EC/EO approach in Palm Beach County, FL and an IG approach in neighboring Broward County provides a small laboratory for seeing which works better.

Thankfully, Brittany Wallman of the Sun-Sentinel has compared the two approaches in two articles,...

It's always disheartening to see high-level officials misuse an ethics program for the sake of personal revenge or, as the official says in the case I'm looking at here, to get "my name cleared."

According to an article yesterday in the Austin Statesman, the last mayor recently filed two ethics complaints against the mayor who defeated...

Should an ethics violation be an impediment to future jobs? In general, I don't think so, especially when the violation was handled responsibly, that is, without a denial, cover-up, and costly, unnecessary investigation and hearing process. But sometimes ethics violations involve much more than the failure to deal responsibly with a conflict.