Robert Wechsler's blog

I would like to nominate the new film Charlie Wilson’s War, a Mike Nichols film starring Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Julia Roberts, for the City Ethics Top Ten Ethics Films list.

Charlie Wilson is a multi-term congressman whose principal activities are drinking, diddling, and (a distant third) deal-making. He happens to also become the major force behind U.S. support for the Afghan mujahideen against...

It is natural for a current or former firefighter to be interested in serving on a fire commission, or a current or former teacher in serving on a school board. But is there an ongoing conflict of interest in doing so?

The question arose on the Milford, Connecticut school board recently. Three members are former school teachers who held union leadership positions.

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It seems so mean-spirited to talk about the conflicts of interest that arise from politicians’ charitable activities, but the revelations about the Clinton Foundation show, in big numbers, what happens so often, in smaller numbers, across the country.

There are limits on how much money one can give to a candidate. But there are no...

Voter ID laws, which are being pushed by the Bush Administration and by Republicans at the state level, have an effect on municipal elections, as well. They are not only a federal and state problem.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, a leader in the fight for more ethical and inclusive voting laws, as well as campaign finance laws, has placed a...

I've just finished reading a book called Illicit by Moises Naim, about the trafficking of everything from people and drugs to artworks and counterfeit DVDs .

One of the things Naim focuses on is why governments have so much trouble putting a dent into any of these types of trafficking. The principal reason is the structure of relationships. Government bureaucracies lose out to increasingly flexible networks of individuals.

In the municipal ethics world, the situation is...

I also write a blog relating to my town's government. One purpose for starting the blog, and its sister information website (the town's website is so limited, it doesn't even include town ordinances, the town's code of ethics, or the town charter), was to create a model that could be used by people in other towns who are faced with an administration that is closed and acts unethically. I...