Report: Many Florida counties already adopting ethics reform

TALLAHASSEE — With Florida legislative leaders promising another sweeping round of ethics reform, a research group has taken a snapshot of counties’ efforts to clean up their own collective acts.

The results: Not too shabby.

Florida State University’s LeRoy Collins Institute and the watchdog group Integrity Florida surveyed 45 of Florida’s 67 counties on ethics, lobbying, campaign-finance and contracting policies. They found a majority of the counties provide ethics training for elected officials, regulate procurement practices and restrict gifts from lobbyists.

The report doesn’t examine the effects the policies have had, and many have been adopted within the past couple of years. Florida led the nation in government corruption cases in the past decade.

Senate President Don Gaetz, R- Niceville, and House Speaker Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, already have announced they plan to push their own reforms in the 2013 legislative session, including cracking down on political slush funds and sharpening the teeth of the Florida Commission on Ethics.

The report’s authors found areas where bigger counties had taken larger steps.

Some have had highprofile ethics lapses like Broward — or active reformers such as Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs — and are starting to be noticed nationally for combating corruption, instead of being a punch line over it.

“This is what counties in Florida have been doing that really makes us proud in some sense, that we are really leading the nation in some of these county efforts,” said FSU political science professor Carol Weissert, director of the institute.

Orange and Seminole were 2 of only 5 counties that have adopted ordinances prohibiting voting conflicts by elected officials.

In several cases, larger counties have gone beyond the state’s ethics requirements. Broward, Lake, Miami-Dade, Orange, Palm Beach and Seminole counties were among 12 of the 45 respondents that have adopted their own ethics codes.

Counties leading the way in reform include Broward and Palm Beach, where multiple county and city elected officials have been convicted of corruption charges in recent years.

“In many of these instances, the reforms did follow corruption,” Weissert said. “But what we’re seeing now ... is counties where they’re not having corruption, but they’re trying to make these changes.”

Where the counties are less stringent than the state: prohibiting voting conflicts by elected officers and requiring lobbyists to report their pay.

Orange and Seminole were two of only five counties that have adopted ordinances prohibiting voting conflicts by elected officials. Last week, the Florida Legislature adopted new ethics rules prohibiting lawmakers from voting on bills in which they or their families have a financial interest.

Only 10 counties in the survey — i ncluding Broward, Orange, Lake and Palm Beach — even require lobbyists to register.