Ethics Reform

Things are moving along well with the Palm Beach County ethics initiative, which I've written about in earlier blog posts (1  2). An inspector general, selected by the ethics commission and two state government attorneys, started work on June 28,...

The confidentiality, or transparency, of local government ethics complaints and proceedings is a funny topic. Most of the time, government officials want as much confidentiality as possible. They don't want ethical issues concerning them to be mentioned in public.

But there are times when they want to be able to blast those who file complaints against them, and then they favor transparency. In other words, which side they're on does not involve policy, but their self-interest. It's...

Can they convict him simply for failing to disclose information when he had no duty to disclose? No Alaska law required it, and there's no federal statute that requires it, so what did he do wrong?

— Donald Ayer, attorney for former Alaska state representative Bruce Weyhrauch (December 2009) (taken from an article on the ktuu.com website). Weyhrauch is accused of having taken a job with an...

Image by Joe Wu

Following up on the previous blog post, here is the first of two examples of local government ethics matters involving anonymity outside of an internet context.

An article in Thursday's Bangor Daily News discusses a state ethics commission investigation into anonymous...

Most local governments leave open meeting and public records matters to the state. But often the slowness and expense of the state enforcement process, as well as weaknesses in state law (e.g., too short a period for noticing agendas, vague guidelines on filling FOI requests), can mean that open meeting and public records laws are insufficiently effective or are ignored.

Historically, enforcement depends largely on the news media, but with their cuts in budget and staff, they are...

Update: June 18, 2010 (see below)

In a memo dated June 14, 2010 (attached; see below), the Broward County (FL) county attorney told the county commission that lobbying provisions in the county ethics commission's proposed ethics code are unconstitutional and,...