I'm a big supporter of making ethics commissions independent of
those over whom they have jurisdiction. Milton, Georgia and, now,
Forsyth County, Georgia have come up with an interesting approach to
ethics commission independence that has one good point and several
bad points.
The recent amendments to the Forsyth County ethics code (the ethics provisions are here) were modeled after Milton's code (this is the complaint procedure; the code is in Ch. 2, Art. VIII), which was passed in 2010 (Forsyth County's county attorney, Ken Jarrard, is also Milton's city attorney) .
The Milton code requires that, after determining that an ethics complaint meets the basic requirements, the city clerk create a special ethics panel by picking three names randomly from a list of between nine and fifteen out-of-town attorneys, whose qualifications need not include any knowledge of government ethics. In Forsyth County, a panel is also created to respond to a request for an advisory opinion.
The recent amendments to the Forsyth County ethics code (the ethics provisions are here) were modeled after Milton's code (this is the complaint procedure; the code is in Ch. 2, Art. VIII), which was passed in 2010 (Forsyth County's county attorney, Ken Jarrard, is also Milton's city attorney) .
The Milton code requires that, after determining that an ethics complaint meets the basic requirements, the city clerk create a special ethics panel by picking three names randomly from a list of between nine and fifteen out-of-town attorneys, whose qualifications need not include any knowledge of government ethics. In Forsyth County, a panel is also created to respond to a request for an advisory opinion.