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If you want to encourage unethical behavior, give individual officials independent power over the sorts of decisions where people have the greatest incentive to tempt officials, and officials are in the best position to enforce pay-to-play.

Here's an interesting potential conflict. Chicago's Civic Federation, a "non-partisan government research organization working to maximize the quality and cost-effectiveness of government services in the Chicago region and State of Illinois," is asked by the city council to evaluate the city's 2016 Olympics bid, to make sure that Mayor Daley's Olympic committee has a reasonable financial plan, according to...

Saturday, August 29 is the day when the Jacksonville City Council's finance committee will consider the budget for the city's ethics office, a big $95,000. There has been talk of using the city's budget crisis to get rid of the ethics office, but the newspapers and the city's civic organizations want to preserve the office.

The city's ethics officer, who will be making a presentation, is Carla Miller, president of City Ethics. The budget hearing can be viewed live on Saturday, from...

Here's a mind-twister of a situation, from St. Marys City (GA; pop 17,000). According to an article on jacksonville.com, four members of the city council wrote the state attorney general asking for a ruling on whether a fifth council member violated state law by refusing to disqualify himself from voting on the proposed relocation of the St. Marys Airport...

Who should pay for a lack of government transparency, the officials keeping the secrets or the citizens who lack access to information?

Applicant disclosure is an effective part of local government ethics that is usually ignored. Usually it is officials who are required to disclose potential conflicts of interest, either in the form of annual disclosure statements, revised when circumstances change, or in the form of announcements that they have a potential conflict and are withdrawing from involvement in a matter.

The principal burden should be on officials, but placing an additional burden on applicants -- such...