Seattle's public campaign financing <a href="http://honestelectionsseattle.org/what-is-initiative-122/&quot; target="_blank">Initiative
I-122</a> passed easily on Tuesday. It should prove to be an
excellent experiment in campaign finance vouchers, an idea that has
been batted about at the federal level, as well.<br>
<br>
Here's how it works. Each election cycle (two years) the city's

Considering that it reflects a typical approach to lobbying, it is
valuable to look at the language of a resolution to improve
Austin's lobbying oversight program (attached; see below). It is
also valuable to consider the opposition to this resolution by a
coalition of local architects, engineers, and contractors, according
to <a href="http://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2015/10/groups-organize-opposition…

Rarely do agencies' own lobbyists get caught by their agency breaking
agency rules on communications. This is what just happened in Houston.
According to <a href="http://abc13.com/news/metro-lobbyist-docked-$10k-after-breaking-agency-…
article last night on Houston's Channel 13 website</a>, an
individual who, under a contract, lobbies state and federal

<b>Campaign Vendors Lobbying Their Candidates</b><br>
According to <a href="http://www.capitalgazette.com/news/government/ph-ac-cn-aaco-registered-…
article in the Capital (of DE) <i>Gazette</i></a>, an assistant
state's attorney for Anne Arundel County, whose political firm was
paid $200,000 by the successful candidate for county executive, is

<b>Lobbyist Extortion</b><br>
According to <a href="http://nbc4i.com/2015/10/15/redflex-lobbyist-expected-to-plead-guilty-t…
article yesterday on Columbus, Ohio's NBC 4 website</a>, a
lobbyist for a red-light camera company pleaded guilty to charges
that he solicited campaign contributions for elected city officials
from his client by creating the impression that the money was needed

<p>Criminal enforcement of ethics violations usually involves fraud, and less so honest services fraud (which was essentially misuse of office) now that it has been essentially limited to bribery. And yet ethics enforcement rarely involves fraud, because ethics codes do not have fraud provisions. This is pretty strange, when you think about it:  the same misconduct being treated as apples and oranges.<br />
<br />

A former head of Chicago's public school system has said she will plead guilty
to a scheme to take hundreds of thousands of dollars, airfare,
meals, and baseball tickets in exchange for steering more than $23
million in no-bid contracts to her former employer, an educational
consulting and training company. The situation provides a valuable
look at the problems that can arise when someone goes through the
revolving door in the manner that is often overlooked by ethics
code:  from a company that seeks financial benefits from an

It was only a matter of time before the U.S. Supreme Court's
campaign finance opinions (and decisions at the trial and appellate
level that have applied them to other situations) would be used to
argue that conduct prohibited or limited by government ethics
provisions are also protected as free speech by the First Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution.<br>
<br>
In August 2015, a complaint against the state legislative ethics
commission (attached; see below) was filed in the Eastern District

<p>Many local government attorneys insist that government ethics laws should not apply to them because they are covered by legal ethics rules. In fact, some government ethics codes have express exceptions for attorneys. I have always insisted that the two are very separate and should not be confused with each other.

Eula Biss's excellent book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Immunity-Inoculation-Eula-Biss-ebook/dp/B00KUY4D7…; target="_blank"><i>On
Immunity</i></a> (Graywolf Press, 2014) is not about legislative
immunity, but about immunity to diseases. And yet there is a great
deal of food for thought in it about municipal ethics.<br>
<br>