Conflicts

This post will be of special interest to those who enjoy the occasional ironies that arise in the world of government ethics. According to an article in today's New York Times, the woman named to be New York City's new schools chancellor has decided to resign from her positions on the boards of Coca Cola, IBM, and Hearst Magazines (where she is chair), at a great financial cost to her. Of these three...

Prof. Patricia Salkin, director of the Government Law Center at Albany Law School and author of the Law of the Land blog, has published another of her regular roundup of what's been happening recently in the ethics of land use. Her focus is on cases that have...

A Resignation from an Ethics Board for a Possible Future Conflict
A member of the Philadelphia Board of Ethics resigned recently, according to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The reason for his resignation was a possible conflict of interest due to his representation of the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) in...

Vernon, CA, the subject of several blog posts here (click here for the latest), has been the object of criminal investigations, but now local officials are starting to get creative in response to the most creatively imagined city in the U.S.

One group of individuals with a great deal of power in local government is not covered by local ethics codes or the other aspects of local ethics programs. That group consists of officers of local political parties.

Sometimes a party chair is the most powerful individual in the city or county, the individual who selects candidates and, if an elected official is disloyal, throws party support to another candidate in the next primary. In other situations, the party chair is the...

County Ethics Embraced By Its Cities and Towns
Ethics reform won big in Palm Beach County on Tuesday. The final tallies were published on Friday. According to an article in yesterday's Palm Beach Post, every single city and town in the county voted in favor of applying the county's code to their town. Overall, 72% of voters supported this reform. Even in the town of Palm Beach, whose council and...