Conflicts

Especially in small towns, bankers often have business relationships with many people and, therefore, do not make the best board and commission members on account of the many conflicts they have or, more frequently, the appearance of impropriety.

According to an article this week in the Asbury Park Press, in Long Branch, NJ (pop. 40,000) there is a dispute concerning the reappointment of...

One thing I have scarcely mentioned in my blog are ethical rules related to a local board or commission when it is acting in a quasi-judicial manner. I mentioned the common-law conflicts in such circumstances in a recent blog post, as well as the absolute immunity given to the Philadelphia ethics board due to its quasi-judicial activities in...

The Grants of a Conflicted Board of Insiders
Sometimes conflicts can cause a city or county serious problems with such things as state and federal grants. This is what has happened in Brockton, MA (pop. 94,000), according to an article in the Enterprise-News.

The board of the city's...

Some situations clearly involve a conflict of interest, but are not dealt with in a local government ethics code. Two issues arise. One is the quality of the local government ethics code. The other is whether the code matters at all, if the conflict is clear.

Such a situation exists with respect to a council member in Bellevue, WA, a Seattle suburb, with the extra twist that the city's ethics code applies to employees, and the state ethics code applies to council members.

Time is a very important element of conflicts of interest. Some conflicts simply exist, but others either occur suddenly or suddenly become relevant.

For example, an official can have a piece of property for twenty years and then suddenly the owner of a neighboring piece of property asks the local government to help turn it into something that would significantly raise the value of the official's property. That's an easy to problem to deal with.

More difficult is the...

It's been almost two years since the New York Times broke the story on the abuses of New York City council earmarks slush fund, which totaled about $50 million a year. This week, the council member featured in the Times article was expelled from the state senate for a violent act committed against his female companion, according to...