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Contractors and Vendors

Robert Wechsler
Last August, I wrote a blog post about the mayor of Tulsa accepting free legal services from an attorney who represented Tulsa in certain matters, that is, from a city contractor. The matter involved the council possibly filing charges against the mayor for allegedly lying about a federal police grant.

Due to poor language in the ethics code, and some poor interpretation, what is a fairly...
Robert Wechsler
Government ethics is dangerous to dating and weddings. That's the message of an article in Sunday's Palm Beach Post.

Because the proposed amendment to the Palm Beach County ethics code's gift provision, just...
Robert Wechsler
As a postscript to the Jersey Sting, on Wednesday, according to a Justice Department press release, the former CFO and CEO of a company that reconditioned and sold athletic equipment to schools and universities were...
Robert Wechsler
Two months ago, a book was published called The Jersey Sting, by two Star-Ledger reporters, Ted Sherman and Josh Margolin. It provides the history of an enormous federal sting operation which led to the arrest of dozens of government officials, most of them from local governments, on July 23, 2009 (see...
Robert Wechsler
Last month, the Obama administration drafted an executive order that would require those seeking federal government contracts to disclose their political contributions, and those of their directors, officers, affiliates, and subsidiaries, made in the two years before they bid for a contract. This draft executive order has been the subject of a great and...
Robert Wechsler
It's been a year since I last wrote about placement agents, so it's time for an update, based on an article put up yesterday on the Forbes Magazine site, designated for the May 23 issue.

Placement agents are intermediaries between pension boards and companies that invest pension boards' funds. They are paid by the investment companies to win...

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