Conflicts

One of the more interesting battles in the civil war among Maricopa County elected officials is the Battle of the Civil Division. When the county attorney indicted County Supervisor Don Stapley in December 2008, the board of supervisors decided to take away the county attorney's civil division and create a separate county civil law department.

A central dispute in the first group of charges brought against Maricopa County Supervisor Don Stapley involved whether he was required to disclose properties held by a company he owned, as long as he listed the company among his assets. Stapley felt this was not required.

Recusal is a touchy subject for government officials, for two principal reasons. One, withdrawing from a matter can appear to constitute an admission of misconduct. This is because so many people, and even ethics codes, consider it wrong to have a conflict. Actually, recusing oneself is a way of dealing responsibly with a conflict, and is the opposite of misconduct.

Two, raising the issue of a conflict can disclose information the official would rather keep personal. After all, the...

When a government employee holds or runs for elective office, there can be conflict of interest problems. The principal problem occurs when the government employee has to participate in a matter that directly or indirectly affects his or her agency or department. Whether there is a conflict depends on how direct the effect is. Another problem involves running for office in violation of the federal Hatch Act.

Undisclosed conflicts can cause a lot of problems, but rarely are they a matter of life and death. In Collin County, TX, north of Dallas, an undisclosed conflict could have been responsible for a man's death sentence (and, perhaps, many more sentences).

Privatizing local government functions can cause conflict of interest problems, but at least contractors can be held to contracts and replaced when they run afoul of ethics or other laws or requirements. The same is not necessarily true when non-profit organizations take over local government functions not as contractors or grant recipients (as with social service agencies), but as partial or full replacements.