Ethics Reform

In June, the Phoenix council took a step toward ethics reform, based on the recommendations of a task force (I critiqued the task force recommendations in an April post entitled "Disappointing Report from Ethics Task Force in Phoenix"). What the council did was approve...

Over the last few weeks, while I was putting the finishing touches on the second edition of the book Local Government Ethics Programs, there was a lot of action in the area of ethics reform. In the next few blog posts, I will summarize the action.

In January, I wrote a blog post about the District of Columbia ethics board's first public forum seeking recommendations for ethics reform. On April 17, the ethics board published a report that makes recommendations for improvements to the city's ethics program (attached; see below).

Of the five recommendations I made in my testimony to the D.C. board, only one of them...

Phoenix has followed Chicago in taking a task force approach to ethics reform. As in Chicago, the mayor selected the task force. The Ethics Task Force, which according to an article in the Arizona Republic, consists of "prominent attorneys and judges," filed a report with the council on March 6. I have been unable to locate a copy of the report, but I did find a 5-page executive summary of the supposedly 20-page report (attached; see below).

Phoenix is one of the...

This week, San Antonio's mayor and city attorney proposed a number of reforms to the city's ethics code and campaign finance regulations. I will deal here only with the ethics reforms. A summary of the proposed reforms and a red-lined copy of the ethics code are attached (see below).

The impetus for these reforms is a matter I discussed in a blog post last...

Many major cities do not prohibit gifts from those seeking special benefits from the city government (restricted sources) to family members of city officials. Such a prohibition may seem a stretch, at least theoretically. How can a government interfere in the gifts given to an official's family members? Consider this situation, from 2011, which recently became public.

According to...