The Canton Township Board of Trustees made it clear Tuesday night that internal wrongdoing won't be tolerated.
An ethics subcommittee consisting of Trustees John Anthony and Ann-Marie Graham-Hudak and Clerk Michael Siegrist recommended the changes after 12 months of research and comparisons to other public service boards' standards of ethics.
"When I ran for this position, I did so with an emphasis on accountability and transparency and the former policy was insufficient, in my opinion," he said.
"If you look at southeast Michigan over the past few years — from Kwame Kilpatrick in Detroit to the Macomb County bribery scandal — there have been some big-time public corruption problems. I thought we needed a tougher ordinance in place to better define our stance on ethics."