Here's an interesting conflict situation out of Forsyth County, Georgia. According to an article in the Forsyth News, a county commissioner owns a company that buys county water and sells it to county residents who used to have wells. The company owns the infrastructure that supplies water to four subdivisions in the county. It is one of several companies that do this. The companies are charged the flat commercial water rate, rather than residential rates that increase with use.

The question is, should the county commissioner participate in negotiations involving water contracts between the county and a city within the county, since the city would apparently be a water reseller, as well?

Here's an interesting conflict question. According to an article in the Tewksbury Patch this week, a special town meeting in Tewksbury, MA will soon vote on whether to go to referendum on the question of replacing the town meeting with a council. The question is whether the elected town meeting moderator, who gets a $450 stipend for his work, has a conflict that will require him not to moderate the special town meeting, because he has a financial interest in preserving the town meeting and, therefore, his stipend.

Former Maricopa County, AZ county attorney Andrew Thomas (with one of his assistants) was disbarred on Tuesday on numerous counts related to bringing false charges against other county officials over a period of years, according to an article in yesterday's Arizona Republic. According to Prof. Bennett Gershman of Pace University, "This is a huge victory for good-government people and people who believe that prosecutors should be accountable for misconduct."

But it is a bigger victory for those who believe government attorneys should be held accountable for their misconduct, whether or not they are prosecutors. Government attorneys are rarely held to account for providing poor ethics advice, or poor advice on any topic. They are rarely held to account for wearing multiple hats and failing to withdraw when their roles are in conflict.

It's amazing the lengths people will go to when they are accused of bribery. Take Zehy Jereis, a former Yonkers, NY party chair who gave nearly $175,000 to a Yonkers council member, and is being accused of doing this in order to get her to make a pivotal vote in favor of his client's controversial mall, according to an article in yesterday's New York Times.

He says it had nothing to do with the mall. It was love. Unrequited love. Not only did he give the council member all sorts of gifts, but he lost 150 pounds for her, got his teeth and hair fixed for her, and helped pay her brother's high school tuition.

Newspapers aren't called the fourth estate for nothing. But in cities these days, they are more like the third estate, more important, that is, than the clergy. In fact, their investigations and editorials can bring down mayors, council presidents, even parties.

Local dailies may be losing money hand over fist, and weeklies, online papers, and blogs have taken away some of their power, but the dailies still have more power with respect to politicians and policies than anyone else.

We like to think of newspapers as run by the Benjamin Franklins and Bradlees of the world:  neutral, wise, and looking for a scoop. But newspaper owners can be seriously political, and often not in the European way of wearing their politics on their sleeves. This didn't use to be such a big problem, because cities had multiple dailies. Few do now.

The ownership of a city daily by individuals with powerful interests in the community to protect can lead one to thoughts of extending government ethics into the fourth estate. This is the case in Philadelphia, according to an article this week in the New York Times entitled "Interference Seen in Philadelphia Papers."

Proximity rules are common to local and state government ethics codes nationwide (see my blog post on them from five years ago). They require officials to withdraw from any matter dealing with property within a certain distance of property they own or rent, no matter how many others have property within the same proximity.

According to a big exposé piece in yesterday's Washington Post, "Congressional representatives are required to certify that they do not have a financial stake in the actions they take." But the rules they have written to apply to themselves do not address proximity. The issue is not proximity, but the process by which proximity was not addressed.