States and Municipal Ethics

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,...

Waiving the Privilege and The Extent of Withdrawal
According to an article in yesterday's Business Journal Daily, the Ohio Ethics Commission, which has jurisdiction over local government ethics, is investigating the Western Reserve Port Authority's lease of property at the local airport near Youngstown. Two controversies have arisen from this investigation...

Two months ago, a book was published called The Jersey Sting, by two Star-Ledger reporters, Ted Sherman and Josh Margolin. It provides the history of an enormous federal sting operation which led to the arrest of dozens of government officials, most of them from local governments, on July 23, 2009 (see...

According to an article in the Billings Gazette last week, the Montana Political Practices Commissioner will have to step down from her position, because her nomination by the governor was not approved by the state legislature. Her office, which handles ethics, campaign finance, and lobbying matters, has jurisdiction over local elected officials...

Going by the reaction of the news media and the Pulitzer committee, the most serious government ethics scandal of 2010 occurred in Bell, California, where the city's top officials were paying themselves huge salaries, taking advantage of an uneducated, uninvolved citizenry.

Well, guess what. According to an article in Friday's Los Angeles Times, a Los Angeles...

It's been a year since I last wrote about placement agents, so it's time for an update, based on an article put up yesterday on the Forbes Magazine site, designated for the May 23 issue.

Placement agents are intermediaries between pension boards and companies that invest pension boards' funds. They are paid by the investment companies to win...