Ethics Reform

It's fascinating how different issues are important to local government officials in difference places at different times. I couldn't say that officials will always dig in their heels and fight this ethics provision, or that another ethics provision never raises an eyebrow.

Take Broward County, FL, for example. After numerous arrests and convictions of local officials, the county commission passed a new ethics ordinace, and the county's citizens voted to have this ordinance apply...

It is important to take state laws into account when drafting ethics provisions, especially in local governments that do not have home rule charters. Here are two situations in the news where this was not done, and ethics reform has been undermined. Dealing with the state laws from the beginning could have made the ethics codes, and the ethics reform process, far better.

I don't write about Jacksonville much, because my colleague at City Ethics, Carla Miller, is the city's ethics officer. She has been working hard to ensure that the city's ethics commission is given more authority and independence, and that the city's ethics laws are improved. This week, the council will be moving closer to approving, or undermining, reforms.

Instead of giving my opinion of what she is seeking, which is basically the same as hers, I will share the recent,...

The dream of every ethics commission is to have a guaranteed budget. But it is not really a dream for two reasons. One, there are ethics commissions with guaranteed budgets. And two, it is a reasonable policy that can be countered only by a local legislative body's need for control. This blog post will look at the arguments for and against a guaranteed budget, as well as several examples of and approaches to guaranteeing budgets for ethics commissions and similar independent bodies and agencies...

I've written a little about ethics issues involving quasi-governmental entities and private entities doing government work (oversight, misuse, and personal financial disclosure). But there are...

At the very end of last year, a grand jury filed a report that found a great deal of corruption in Florida's state and local governments, and made numerous recommendations for ethics reform (see my blog post on the report). This provided the perfect opportunity for improving ethics programs across the state.

Some counties, notably Broward and Palm Beach,...