Ethics Reform

According to an article in yesterday's Chicago Daily Observer, Cook County commissioner Tony Peraica has proposed a series of improvements to the ethics code. Here's a summary of the proposed amendments, taken from...

There was a fascinating editorial in the Waterbury (CT) Republican-American yesterday. The editorial turns anti-government anger against the idea of a local government ethics program, and yet it has some valuable things to say about government ethics. Here's an edited version of it:

Misinformation is rampant in local government ethics. And the less people understand it, the easier it is for the misinformation to be taken at face value.

According to an article in yesterday's Dispatch, in Columbus, a city of 24,000 in eastern Mississippi, one council member's response to a fist fight between the mayor and another council member was to propose an ethics code so that officials...

Last September, I wrote a blog post about an ethics initiative in Palm Beach County, Florida. A response to numerous scandals, it featured an ethics pledge, primarily for government officials, and a successful attempt to get an independent ethics commission and inspector general for the county government. I felt that the business leaders in Palm Beach County who led the...

Update: May 12, 2010 (see below)

According to an article in Tuesday's Sun-Sentinel, Broward County (FL) Commissioner Ilene Lieberman feels that the ethics code written by a special commission on ethics (most of whose members...

New York State's new comptroller (see an earlier blog post about the prior comptroller's ethical problems) has recently produced a report based on an audit of 31 New York local governments and a survey of many more (see the press release for an overview...