Ethics Reform

"Even the baby Jesus accepted gifts, and I don't think it corrupted him." and "The taking of gifts does not corrupt a person. It's when you're taking those gifts for personal gain that they corrupt you."

—Former North Carolina state representative Drew Saunders. These words were spoken back in 2006, but they're far too good to reject on account of age. What's especially interesting is the context in which the first statement was made:  Saunders was pushing for an amendment to a...

One problem local governments have in drafting ethics codes is that they want it to be too many things, to serve too many purposes. They want it to be an aspirational code of conduct, making local government more civil and government officials more honest and fair. They want it to make officials follow all relevant laws and constitutional provisions. And they want it to deal with conflicts of interest, that is, with the situations where personal interests may be placed above the public interest...

In a blog post yesterday, I noted that North Carolina was soon to require local governments to pass ethics codes. I've now found out more about the proposed law, and it is disappointing, to say the least.

What just happened in San Diego, according to an article in yesterday's Union-Tribune, is a lesson for local government ethics commission members, especially commission chairs, and even more especially chairs who speak out. Most important, it points out how important EC independence is.

Last week, I wrote about municipal corruption scandals in Montreal. This week, I'm happy to be able to write about a report requested by the province of Quebec, which determined that the province's municipalities should all have a code of ethics (only about 10% do now), that the largest cities and the counties should have ethics commissioners, and that financial disclosure and ethics training should be required. Contractors...

Ethics Reform and Ethics Environments
This weekend, the Press-Enterprise ran an excellent editorial about ethics reform in San Bernardino County. Not only do the editors recognize that watered-down, "symbolic" ethics reform is worthless, but they also recognize that even valuable ethics reform, such as a proposed sunshine ordinance...