Ethics commissions serve a vital role in democracy by upholding transparency principles that preserve the public’s trust in government. When public officials are well-informed of the laws that govern their public service and when the public has full access to information about their public officials, government can be held accountable and the public’s trust grows.

CLC designed this analysis to offer proven solutions for ethics commissions that face such challenges and want tools that are efficient for ethics commissions of all sizes and budgetary considerations. We identified the top 10 tools for ethics commissions to implement to better promote transparency. We researched and interviewed state and local ethics commissions in a diverse set of jurisdictions across the country to provide examples of the following 10 tools:

For each tool, the relevant ethics commissions provided practical insight on why they developed the tool, the benefits, the implementation costs and the lessons from their experience.