Whistleblowers

An op-ed piece in the New York Times Sunday Review today looks at whistleblowing from the perspective of whether people lean toward fairness or loyalty (those who lean to fairness are more likely to blow the whistle on misconduct). This is, of course, a simplistic approach, but valuable nevertheless. What is especially valuable is the authors' recommendation of reframing...

According to an article in the Orlando Sentinel last week, the Florida Commission on Ethics found probable cause that the Osceola County Clerk of the Court "[used] his position to intimidate [his office's] employees in order to enhance his personal and political power." This raises the issue of whether...

Last September, I wrote a blog post about the attempt by District of Columbia council members to block a subpoena by employing a legislative immunity defense. The case involves retaliation against a whistleblower who had alleged improper council input in the awarding of a lottery contract.

On Monday,...

Did you know that the District of Columbia has its own Speech or Debate Clause? I learned this from reading the Motion for a Protective Order on Behalf of Mayor Vincent C. Gray filed on Thursday in the case of Payne v. District of Columbia. Gray, a former council president, is seeking to be protected from testifying in a case involving alleged retaliation against a whistleblower. A...

This is the second of two posts looking at Kathryn Schulz's excellent book, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (2010), as it applies to local government ethics. This post focuses on how to deal...

Update: September 17, 2011 (see below)

An article in yesterday's Stamford Advocate keeps asking the question, Who should pay? The article is referring to attorney's fees related to an ethics proceeding. Most ethics codes do not deal with this issue, and therefore it often turns into a big political controversy after the fact, leaving a...