Transparency

Many jurisdictions have a rule that disallows the filing of an ethics complaint against an elected official within so many days before an election. The purpose of such a rule is to prevent the abuse of the ethics process for political purposes. But is this the best solution to this problem?

Two days ago, I wrote about a Louisiana lawyer-legislator who is arguing that disclosure rules should not apply to lawyers, because the practice of law is regulated by the state supreme court. The story behind an indictment in New Jersey this week makes a strong argument for applying disclosure rules to lawyers, as they are in California and North Carolina, only...

Lawyer-legislators are extremely creative people. The latest use of their creativity is to argue that ethics boards cannot require disclosure of a conflict of interest that arises from legal representation because they have no jurisdiction over the practice of law. Only the state Supreme Court has that jurisdiction.

The lawyer-legislator in this matter is state senator Rob Marionneaux of Louisiana, a state whose ethics code applies to local governments. According to...

An Active EC Is a Good Thing
Local officials often say that because there are no complaints to or advisory opinions by their ethics commissions, their town or city government does not have ethics problems. Actually, it's the other way around. Local governments with active ethics commissions, especially dealing with advisory opinions, are more likely to have healthy ethical environments. It shows that people trust the ethics commission, it shows that people are thinking about ethics...

I make a great effort to be nonpartisan in choosing what and whom I write about. I am an unaffiliated voter who believes in nonpartisan local government. But yesterday, the Republican Party took a strong stand against government ethics and, in its most important statement in years, totally ignored it.

When I wrote about the disclosure controversy in Suffolk County back in July, I didn't realize that another interesting ethics issue was going on there. In late June, the county legislature had instituted an investigation of the county ethics commission. One reason for this investigation appears to be the commission's decision to allow the county executive to file only a state disclosure form,...