On November 29, Florida State University’s LeRoy Collins
Institute and the new good government group Integrity Florida
released <a href="http://www.integrityfl.org/county-ethics-report/&quot; target="”_blank”">a report
entitled "Florida Counties Bridge the Ethics Policy Gap"</a>,
which<em> </em>analyzes the results of a survey of government
ethics programs and reforms in 45 of Florida’s 67 counties.<br>
<br>

When the economy is booming, local government
corruption feeds off the sale of government land, development
projects, and construction contracts. When the economy is doing
poorly, there is usually less money floating around to fund
corruption. But in bad times, local governments are willing to
accept the help of companies and nonprofits, which might have (or appear to have) their
own interests at stake in what they fund for local governments.
This leads to another set of problems.<br>
<br>

<a href="http://www.acluct.org/issues/studyfindsdeficientpolicec.htm&quot; target="”_blank”">An
eye-opening report was published this week</a> by the American
Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut. The report was based on a
survey of all the state's police departments regarding the filing of
complaints. Although complaints filed by the public against police
officers rarely involve conflicts of interest, some of the findings

<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/misuse-local-office-regional-board&qu…; target="”_blank”">In
October, I wrote a blog post</a> about a report commissioned by
the <a href="http://www.wmata.com/&quot; target="”_blank”">Washington Metropolitan Area
Transit Authority</a> (WMATA), based on an investigation of an

Yesterday, at the annual conference of <a href="http://www.cogel.org/">the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL)</a>, the only association of state and local government ethics professionals, Judge Anthony Wilhoit was given the COGEL Award, which is
given annually to someone who has "made a significant, demonstrable,
and positive contribution to the fields of campaign finance,
elections, ethics, freedom of information or lobbying for a

Between the American Thanksgiving holiday and throwing out my back so that I
couldn't sit at my computer, I missed one of the most fascinating
stories of the year:  a <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/read-the-court-ruling-remov…; target="”_blank”">judicial
dismissal of Toronto's mayor for a conflict of interest violation</a>.

<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/chicago-task-force-second-report-v-%E…; target="”_blank”">In

Ethics program independence is, as far as I'm concerned, the single
most important issue in ethics reform. Nothing gains the public's
trust as much as an ethics program that is independent from the
officials over whom it has jurisdiction.<br>
<br>
It is clear from the second report of the Chicago Ethics Reform Task
Force (attached; see below) that the task force members cared about
making the Chicago's ethics program more independent. But the task

<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/chicago-task-force-second-report-v-%E…; target="”_blank”">My

second blog post on the Chicago ethics task force's second report
identified what I considered to be its worst ideas</a>. Mayor
Emanuel's recommendations accepted its bad ideas just as much as
its good ideas.<br>
<br>

<a href="http://chicago.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=2213945&GUID=58366FD1-5D37…; target="”_blank”">The
second round of Chicago ethics reform recommendations</a>, based
on the ethics task force's second report (attached; see below), have