Updates: August 24 and 26, 2010 (see below)

For those who, like me, believe that neither a mayor nor a local legislative body nor a city attorney has any business getting involved in the government ethics process, here's an example you can use of the mess they can make when they do get involved.

Last Saturday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a long article, "Connections Count at Law Firm," on the Washington/Atlanta-based law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge. This firm was known to me primarily as the firm behind the Pay to Pay Law Blog, a good, although too infrequent blog that looks at government ethics and campaign finance from the compliance side, that is, from the point of view of the companies that have to comply with the rules.

McKenna Long is also, according to the article, the tenth-largest lobbying firm in the country, it represents numerous government officials in ethics and election law matters, and it has many former and even current officials on staff, some of whom aren't even lawyers.

The most interesting of its "senior strategic advisors" is David Skaggs, a former congressman from Colorado and, more important, chairman of the board of the Office of Congressional Ethics, the surprisingly aggressive new part of the House ethics process. Other senior strategic advisors include Howard Dean and Zell Miller.

The usual image we get when we hear about a government official getting something free from a contractor is of a new kitchen or driveway. But free services can also be invisible, like legal advice and other professional service.

In March I wrote a blog post about a situation in La Crosse, Wisconsin where the mayor brought his father, who runs a refuse business, to meet with a county official about a county solid waste assessment. A council member sought advice from the city attorney rather than the city ethics board, and then the mayor said he would put the matter before the ethics board. His father's company has a refuse contract with the mayor's city.

First Ask for an Advisory Opinion That Doesn't Match the Facts
But according to a La Crosse Tribune article in May, the mayor asked the ethics board "whether it's appropriate to participate in discussions regarding a business he isn't employed by and doesn't have an ownership stake in." His request didn't mention the meetings with the county official, to which he brought his father. In other words, it was a request for advice on a hypothetical situation, when there was a different, real situation involved. This is extremely disingenuous, and the ethics board should have refused to give an opinion.

In a recent blog post, I wrote about a federal third circuit decision that a law prohibiting an ethics complainant from announcing the filing of the complaint violates the complainant's first amendment rights. This decision contradicts a second circuit decision that upheld a law prohibiting the announcing of the filing of a judicial ethics complaint.

In this light, the brand new Utah legislative ethics complaint procedures statute flies in the face not only of the first amendment, but also of reason. Here's the relevant section:

According to an article in the News-Tribune, the governor of Missouri recently signed an ethics bill (SB 844) that made many changes in the state's ethics and campaign finance programs, and failed to make others, such as a campaign contribution limit, which the legislature had eliminated in 2006. Missouri's ethics commission has jurisdiction over local government officials.

I'd like to focus on three interesting and questionable changes.