In the news

In a recent blog post, I listed the suits filed by Maricopa County's sheriff Joe Arpaio and county attorney Andrew Thomas against other county officials during the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws conference right in the heart of Maricopa County.

Well, it got worse. On the last day of the conference, according to...

The ethics commission for the largest American city, and the only one with a truly appropriate title — New York City's Conflicts of Interest Board — is appointed by the city's extremely strong mayor, with council approval.

If this old and highly respected EC were to be made independent of the administration it oversees, it would send an important message to the rest of the country's local...

I talk a lot about the importance of independent ethics commissions. But independence is not always a good thing for local government boards and commissions. Independence without oversight, transparency, and independent ethics enforcement easily turns into someone's fiefdom.

According to an article in the Detroit Free Press, Detroit's two...

Standard of proof is a big issue in ethics enforcement, as it is in any enforcement. A year and a half ago, I wrote a blog post on the mishmash of standards of proof in local ethics codes and in the codes of states that have jurisdiction over local government ethics. In many codes there is no stated standard or a worthlessly ambiguous standard. In others, the standard is clear, but a serious obstacle to enforcement...

There are a lot of stupid reasons for opposing ethics reform initiatives, but an organization in Utah has pulled a Plaxico Burress with the stupidest of all.

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.