Ethics and Elections Commission Cases

Reports, correspondence, memoranda, and other materials comprising case files of requests for clarification of ethics policies and election laws, advisory opinions, whistleblower files, and public disclosure requests of all of the above. The series is divided into two subseries, the first being the files of the Board of Ethics and the Fair Campaign Practices Commission. The second subseries contains the files of the Ethics and Elections Commission, created in 1991 by the merger of the two departments. While the Board of Ethics and the Fair Campaign Practices Commission were two separate agencies until 1991, their respective records were interfiled after the merger and maintained as one unit.

The first subseries, the case files of the Board of Ethics and the Fair Campaign Practices Commission, is divided into two further subseries, Legal Opinions and Cases, each of which is filed alphabetically by the type of opinion being requested or the party accused of violating either the ethics code or election law. The Legal Opinions contain requests from Councilmembers and others regarding ethics codes. The Cases contain investigations of presumed violations. This subseries contains material for cases from 1971 to 1991.

The second subseries, the case files of the Ethics and Elections Commission, is filed according to case number. After the merger, a system was established to assign a unique number to each case received by the department. The first two numbers of each file represents the year in which it was created, so that the cases are arranged chronologically. Files without case numbers are filed at the end of the year in which they were created. In addition to the case number, each case is identified further by either the name of the party requesting information or an opinion, the party accused of a violation, or, in the case of anonymous complaints, the department accused and the type of violation. This subseries contains case files from 1991 to 2002.