Ethics Reform

A good followup to my last blog post, on Lawrence Lessig's book, is what Jack Abramoff said on 60 Minutes this Sunday, pushing his new book Capitol...

A lot of interesting issues have arisen with respect to Santa Fe's Ethics and Campaign Review Board.

A Majority of Lawyers on an Ethics Board
First, a new selection process was created, and the ethics board members were replaced some time between the July and August meetings. Instead of having council members individually select ethics board members, which was a terrible idea, now a local bar...

Let's say you're a professional who wants to give something back to your community by serving on a city board or commission. You open up the newspaper and read that your mayor is saying, "It is not the five of us commissioners who make the city great. It's the citizens who are passionate about it, and now we're telling them, 'Sorry you can't serve.'"

Or the mayor is saying, "On certain boards we require professional experience. With what is now required by the Ethics Commission,...

Election time can be a good time for local government ethics. Good government candidates spout all sorts of interesting ideas about ethics independence, budgeting, transparency, and the like, which are rarely heard between elections.

Take, for example, Leland Yee, who is running for mayor of San Francisco. His Plan for an Independent City Hall starts off with a call for the...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel continues to make small government ethics improvements in Chicago. Yesterday, according to a city press release, the council passed five ethics reforms, all but one of them involving lobbyists. The principal reform is the creation of a searchable online lobbyist registration and reporting system. This will...

Everyone knows about ambulance-chasing lawyers, but until reading an article in today's Citizens' Voice of Luzerne County (PA), I had never heard of hearse-chasing deputy coroners. Maybe I would have known about them if I'd watched the TV show Six Feet Under.

According to the article, funeral home directors in...