Robert Wechsler's blog

How a big-city police chief responds to his commission of an ethics violation is more important than the violation itself. The worst thing he can do is act as if he is above the law, as if ethics laws, not to mention ethics considerations, do not apply to him.

Sadly, Miami's police chief, John Timoney, has done the wrong thing almost every time he had the opportunity.

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According to a recent article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth's mayor, Mike Moncrief, made $633,000 last year from the oil and gas business. He also has an interest in several real estate developments. A committee, appointed by the mayor and council, will soon be making recommendations on rules for natural gas drilling and on fees that affect real estate development.

Form of government issues are not generally considered to be part of government ethics.  But they are intertwined in important ways.

This can be seen from the New York City Council slush fund scandal.  According to an article in today's New York Times, it began when the Board of Estimate, a finance board in charge of writing the budget, was abolished in the charter revision of 1989.  This gave...

Ethics complaints are often brought for purely political reasons, and election time is the favorite time for bringing them.

According to an article in yesterday's Flint Journal, a Thetford Township Supervisor brought an ethics complaint before his own board against a township Trustee who is planning to run for his seat this year. The complaint raises a reasonable problem...

Elizabeth Wolgast’s 1992 book, Ethics of an Artificial Person: Lost Responsibility in Professions and Organizations, raises some very important government ethics questions. I will deal with just one of them here.

The term “artificial persons” includes lawyers and government officials who are considered to act in the name of others. Wolgast’s book looks at the problems such artificial persons cause with respect to our ordinary views of such ethical issues as responsibility and...

Ethics in a small town can be very problematic when one large company with special property interests comes into town. Whether it is a developer, a landfill owner, or other sort of business that seeks to get property or expand its holdings at an inexpensive price, its needs often lead it to tempt individual local government officials or dominate the town's politics.

In Franklin County (northeastern New York State), a new sort of business has been causing local governments ethics...