Conflicts

Problematic Development
According to Harry Themal's column in yesterday's News Journal, the newly elected county executive of New Castle County (DE) wants to review government processes "top-to-bottom." There is just one catch. According to Themal, land use procedures are most in need of reform, but the new county executive's wife is a big land-use attorney representing local...

Two important issues arise from a story about a competitive bid for a concrete contract for an arena in Louisville which, according to an article in yesterday's Louisville Courier-Journal, was won by a company solely owned by a member of the state task force that chose the site, the chair of the board that manages the arena, a close friend of the coach of the arena's primary tenant, and a...

There's an instructive local government ethics situation in the 2008 French film The Class (Entre les murs), which I watched yesterday evening. A teenage student is being given a disciplinary hearing at his public high school in Paris after accidentally hitting a girl with his bag and walking out of his class. His teacher is a teacher representative on the disciplinary committee.

Update: December 1, 2010 (see below)

Last week, the Texas Attorney General issued a legal opinion on the role of the county attorney in representing and advising the El Paso County ethics commission, which was established in 2009.

The county attorney herself...

In a recent blog post, I wrote about how the mayor's selection for New York City schools chancellor needed to get a waiver from the state department of education because she lacked an educational background, and that she resigned corporate board positions to make it clear she was serious about taking the job, even though there were, in some cases, no clear conflict.

Unfortunately, the state...

The spread of corruption from local to state to national is often ignored. And when corruption is discovered, there is much litigation. In fact, it's often hard to see corruption clearly here in the U.S. That's why the occasional look at corruption abroad is useful, like looking in an only slightly distorted mirror.