Complaints/ Investigations/Hearings

“It’s much to-do about not much. I’m trying to run a city, and you’re worried about people’s relationships?” These are the words of Mount Vernon, NY mayor Ernest Davis, who is the subject of IRS and FBI investigations, and now an investigation by the city's ethics board, according to an article in Wednesday's Journal News.

Dealing...

The first opinion of the District of Columbia's Board of Ethics and Government Accountability (a searchable copy is attached; see below) raises some interesting questions relating to enforcing unenforceable ethics provisions, vagueness, and publishing evidence and an opinion about a case that is being dismissed before an investigation has been conducted. The opinion also shows that the new ethics board has a long way to go up the learning curve of government ethics.

The arrest of Miami Beach's former procurement director last October may not be news, but there's a lot to be learned from this case. The issues include personal discretion, alternatives to fully competitive bidding, access to information, and debarment rules.

Officials and lawyers tend to act as if they were Platonists. That is, they talk about conflicts of interest as if they existed in a ideal form, divorced from reality.

Many government ethicists, including me, see conflicts of interest as things that exist in the real world, a world where the public is concerned that officials seek to use their office to help themselves and those with whom they have special relationships, such as family members and business associates. What is odd...

The FBI had to work hard for years to get a grand jury indictment of former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin yesterday (a searchable PDF of the indictment is attached; see below).

A lot of what occurred could have been stopped a long time ago if the city and state had better ethics laws and the city's ethics board was able to initiate complaints and hold public hearings on ethics issues that came to its attention. It appears that every time I read the indictment of a mayor or council...

Government ethics proceedings are usually not very satisfying for those involved. Individuals rarely get to tell the entire story from their point of view. Nor do they profit from hearing how others saw the situation or experienced the events. The format for ethics proceedings is similar to the criminal justice system, with charges, a prosecution, witnesses, documents, and the ethics commission as jury. Or a settlement is reached, the equivalent of a plea bargain, and no story is told at all...