Oakland City Council Kills Plan to Strengthen Government Watchdog
Five councilmembers rejected a ballot measure that would have improved the city’s ethics commission, which is currently investigating cases involving current and former lawmakers.
Eli Wolf, reporting for The Oaklandside, asks, "Is it a conflict to have lawmakers decide the budget of a watchdog agency that has the power to investigate and penalize them?"
“In most cities the council is the one that has got to approve the budget, and that budget is just part of their legislative authority,” says John Pelissero, director, government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
John Pelisssero, director, government ethics, quoted by The Oaklandside.
Beaux-Arts style cupola and clock tower of the Oakland City Hall, California. Photo by Almonroth and reused under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.