Ethics Commissions/Administration

"The appropriate authority" is a vague phrase to base a major ethics reform proposal on, but that is just what the District of Columbia's draft Comprehensive Ethics Reform Act of 2011 does.

Introduced Tuesday by the council chair, this act is neither comprehensive nor does it create the accountability that the name of the new ethics office, the Office of Government Accountability,...

Government ethics is dangerous to dating and weddings. That's the message of an article in Sunday's Palm Beach Post.

Because the proposed amendment to the Palm Beach County ethics code's gift provision, just...

In March, I wrote a blog post about a nepotism situation in Valparaiso, IN. The city's ethics commission found that the hiring of the fire chief's son would be in violation of the ethics code, because the chief would be directly involved in personnel matters involving his son.

According to an...

According to an article in the Billings Gazette last week, the Montana Political Practices Commissioner will have to step down from her position, because her nomination by the governor was not approved by the state legislature. Her office, which handles ethics, campaign finance, and lobbying matters, has jurisdiction over local elected officials...

Going by the reaction of the news media and the Pulitzer committee, the most serious government ethics scandal of 2010 occurred in Bell, California, where the city's top officials were paying themselves huge salaries, taking advantage of an uneducated, uninvolved citizenry.

Well, guess what. According to an article in Friday's Los Angeles Times, a Los Angeles...

Needless to say, last week's oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Carrigan v. Nevada Commission on Ethics case, which I have been following over the past year, was the last oral argument of the term. Was this putting local government ethics in the caboose or saving the best for last?
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