In the news

Update below:

The Internet has been around for some time now, and yet local government officials still get away with saying things like, “If you have a better process or procedure [than having the city council enforce the ethics code], I would like to hear about it.”

According to an article yesterday on Fox23.com in Tulsa,...

An article in yesterday's New York Times points to yet another clever end run around ethics laws involving municipal bonds. Bond underwriters are not allowed to make campaign contributions, to prevent a pay-to-play environment. However, financial advisers, the people who hook local governments up with bond underwriters, are allowed to make campaign contributions. And so they do, in large...

Check out this excellent look at Vincent J. Fumo, a Pennsylvania state senator who "made no distinction between the personal and the political." Of special interest is his intimidating treatment of his staff.

My earlier blog entry on Fumo.

What is more horrible than the scheme of two eastern Pennsylvania judges to fill two for-profit juvenile detention centers with thousands of youths who would not otherwise have been removed from their families and schools?

The fact that they could get away with it in the midst of a world of professionals – lawyers, social workers, police officers, and various court and juvenile workers -- all of whom knew that the youths were being unjustly harmed...

Type "ethics" into the search line at utah.gov, and all that comes up is Archery Ethics Course Online.

In response to what are referred to in Utah as last year's "ethics wars," a new legislative ethics bill has been drafted. What is interesting for local government ethics is how focused the new bill is on fighting last year's war, with little thought about anything else.

It's good to see that, upon his death, attention is being given to the life of Donald C. Alexander, the IRS Commissioner who stood up to President Nixon at the end of Nixon's time in office.