Ethics in the 80th Lege
Ethics—honesty, accountability, and disclosure issues—have become a major subject of concern in our nation. Numerous public elected and appointed officials from several states and from the federal government recently have been found guilty of criminal offenses stemming from violations of state and federal ethics laws and regulations.
When people who hold the public trust, whether elected or appointed, act in their own personal interest or in the interest of private entities instead of in the public interest, then such actions should not be tolerated and must be dealt with quickly and firmly.
Ethics in Texas
There are currently a dozen proposed pieces of legislation addressing ethics issues making their way through the Texas Legislature. These include bills relating to the disclosure of gifts to public officials, reporting of campaign contributions, filing of campaign finance reports, the “revolving door” between public office and lobbying, and ethics training programs for state officials and employees.
TCAN is monitoring all of these legislative issues and has developed a list of proposed bills we are supporting. Soon we will also publish a list of those bills we would recommend be rejected.
It is a primary objective of TCAN to work for more stringent ethics regulation and enforcement along with stronger penalties to make government cleaner and more accountable to the people.
Posted: February 26th, 2007 under Ethics in gov't.
