Disclosure

There are two morals to the following story. One involves law, the other ethics.

Last August, the Nevada Policy Research Institute ran a long commentary on the fact that Nevada's 17 school superintendents were not filing financial disclosure statements with the state ethics commission, something required of all the state's "public officers." Even though the superintendents met...

Here's a situation from Lafayette Parish, a city of 220,000 in south-central Louisiana, which shows how when one official fails to deal responsibly with his conflicts, he is likely to be complicit in helping other officials deal irresponsibly with their conflicts and with those of their colleagues. When this official is a government attorney, it can cause an entire board or agency to deal irresponsibly with a conflict.

I wish that a grad student somewhere would decide to do an exhaustive study of a poor ethics environment. Broward County, Florida would not be a bad choice as the subject of her research.

According to an article in the Miami Herald this week, a Deerfield Beach commissioner, formerly mayor and formerly a Broward County commissioner, is the 17th...

When there is no formal process for dealing with a council member's conflict of interest, and the council handles the matter itself, things can get farcical. This is what is happening in Bellevue, WA. This wealthy suburb of Seattle, with a population of 120,000, has an ethics code for employees, but with no independent enforcement. Its ethics code for elected officials is just the state's limited provisions, again...

Update: May 14, 2011 (see below)

An ethics controversy in Hartford presents a perfect opportunity to show the difference between ethics and law, and the right way to approach financial disclosure requirements.

Here are the facts, as reported in two Jon Lender columns in the Hartford Courant Sunday and...

An interesting question arises from a big investigative article in yesterday's Miami Herald:  is it unethical for a mayor and his wife to be part of a shadow banking network in their city?