Ethics Reform

Good and Bad News from Memphis
The good news from Memphis is that newly-elected mayor A. C. Wharton, Jr. issued an ethics executive order last week (attached; see below). The order's provisions, which do not apply to council and its staff, are less valuable in their own right than as a prod to the council to improve the current ethics code.

After many months of deliberation (and a blog post), yesterday the Palm Beach Board of County Commissioners passed three ordinances, establishing a new ethics and lobbying code, ethics commission, and...

This summer, several New Jersey local government officials were arrested in a big FBI sting operation (see my blog post). Yesterday, an ethics audit focused on development practices was released. Requested by the Jersey City council, it was written by three members of a New Jersey law firm.

According to...

Ethics reform aimed at political opponents is a good way to undermine the whole idea of ethics reform. This is what is happening in San Jose.

San Jose starts off with an odd ethics program. Title 12: Ethics Provisions does not even have a conflict of interest provision, nor does the city have an ethics commission. It is primarily a campaign finance and lobbying law, with a gift...

Yesterday, Philadelphia's Task Force on Ethics and Campaign Finance Reform released a 58-page report (plus ethics laws) requested by the city's mayor and council president in 2008.

The report recommends a large number of reforms, most of them stricter than what exists, some of them less strict and more realistic. Here are some of the most important recommendations:

One way of describing government ethics is that it involves the use and abuse of the power that goes with government officials' positions. Not all such abuses are covered by ethics laws, of course. This blog post looks at an instance of abuse that is not covered. It involves a state legislature and, especially, one state representative, in a state where local ethics is handled at the state level.