Blogs

Who should be on a local government pension board? Should conflicts of interest be taken into account? These two questions are closely interrelated, because the common answer seems to be that those with the greatest conflict are also the most appropriate members.

There are two values at odds here:  letting employees and retirees manage their own pensions, and the public interest in having tax dollars handled by disinterested and competent individuals.

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Once again, California is in the vanguard.  This time, it's blogs by mayors, city managers, and other local government officials (for list, click here; not all of these are government officials' blogs, but many are and it's not hard to tell them apart).

This is a risky approach to transparency, but by opening the blog to citizen comments, it certainly sends a...

The standard of proof for determining whether an ethical violation occurred has become an issue in Louisiana's ethics reform. After looking at several local government ethics codes, as well as the ethics codes of the states that have jurisdiction over local government officials, I don't think standards of proof have become enough of an issue in most jurisdictions.

According to...

In the materials I have found online, Speech or Debate Clause issues are discussed in terms of state legislators (and usually state constitutions), even though the federal Speech or Debate Clause applies equally to local government legislators. But the discussions are all relevant to local government situations.

I will continue to add to this list, and I'd appreciate receiving information about other discussions of these issues.

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The decision of the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal in In re Arnold (May 23, 2008) causes serious problems with respect to ethics enforcement against local government legislators, at least in Louisiana. It opens up a can of worms that I haven't seen discussed (I'd appreciate being alerted to where it has been discussed).

The court decided that the Legislative...

The Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One doesn't like having to get approval from the federal government for changes in its voting policy, in order to prevent racial discrimination; it says that everything's fine and dandy in Northwest Austin. The requirement can be found in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, extended in 2006.

NAMUDNO, which apparently doesn't think the Voting Rights Act should have been extended, because racial discrimination is a thing of the...