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Politics may be local for politicians, but is it for citizens? The 2009 Joyce Foundation Illinois Survey shows that in January the people of Illinois were more concerned about corruption in government than about the economy. Last January only 49% of those polled were extremely concerned about corruption; now 61% are (and 50% are extremely concerned about the economy, as opposed to 45% the year before).

What...

One argument rarely made for effective government ethics programs is that they will prevent government officials from being prosecuted for "honest services fraud."

Rarely does an ethics commission get a clear chance to show it has no favoritism. The Nevada Commission on Ethics will soon get that chance.

Thumbs up for the Virginia House of Delegates General Laws Committee. According to an editorial in today's Charlottesville Daily Progress, this House committee greatly improved a Senate bill on disclosure of conflicts of...

There's a lot of talk among government ethics practitioners about how important it is for ethics commissions to have teeth, that is, the ability to at least reprimand and fine government officials for ethics violations. Requiring council approval of ethics recommendations brings elected officials into the ethics process and politicizes it. And politicizing an ethics program undermines its goal of gaining the public's trust in elected officials to govern for the public, not for themselves and...

The conclusion of an op-ed column in today's Sarasota Herald-Tribune about the mess in Venice that I wrote about yesterday made me realize that I had not yet written about one of the most important problems in government ethics:  process vs. substance.