Recusal is a two-part process. First, the official discloses his interest in a matter that has or will come before his board or agency. Then, the official does not participate in that matter.

In Tucson, this process was distorted by the involvement of a board attorney. According to an article in Wednesday's Arizona Daily Star, the chair and vice-chair of the Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities District Board, an important development board in Tucson, were concerned about a member's possible conflict of interest and asked the board's attorney for an advisory opinion. The city of 540,000 does not appear to have an ethics officer or commission, so this was the most reasonable alternative.

It's important to be careful when it comes to conflicts of interest, but it's also important not to be too careful. When you're too careful, you send the wrong message to members of the community and you miseducate them about government ethics.

This is what happened this week in my own town of North Haven, Connecticut. According to an article in the July 16 North Haven Citizen, the first selectman, effectively the mayor, was concerned that a nominee for the town's board of education had a husband who had once been a teacher in the school system and had resigned.

There is nothing more important in local government ethics than timely, independent, professional ethics advice. And there is no bigger problem in local government ethics than poor ethics advice, especially that given by local government attorneys who (1) do not have a full understanding of government ethics, especially the fact that its rules are minimum requirements, which means that a strict interpretation of the language is inappropriate in providing ethics advice, (2) are political appointees and/or people with an ongoing relationship with the official, and will therefore be viewed as helping the official get away with possibly unethical conduct, and/or (3) act as if they are representing the official rather than the position or the agency or the local government.

Things are moving along well with the Palm Beach County ethics initiative, which I've written about in earlier blog posts (1  2). An inspector general, selected by the ethics commission and two state government attorneys, started work on June 28, according to an article in the Sun-Sentinel. The next day, according to another Sun-Sentinel article, the county commission gave initial approval to placing on the November ballot a county charter amendment question that would give the county inspector general and the county ethics commission jurisdiction over the county's 38 municipalities.

Indefinite benefits, like indirect benefits, are often not dealt with by ethics codes, and this means that they can cause confusion and controversy. This is one reason I tend to speak in terms of "possible conflicts," because possible conflicts based on indefinite benefits can be just as injurious to the public trust as certain conflicts based on certain benefits.

In the current situation in Cincinnati, it is not certain whether the streetcar project will benefit the council member's family firm, nor is it even certain that the streetcar route will run by or near the family firm's property, as the council member pointed out in his letter to the editor. However, the great likelihood, based on other such projects and the intent of this project, is that it will benefit all nearby properties and businesses.

According to an article in yesterday's Morning Journal, the Law Director of Lorain, OH (a city of 70,000), advising a council member, said, “If his employer had a direct financial interest, he would have a conflict. But it does not.”

A council member who was vice president of a regional firefighters association (a union), although no longer a firefighter himself, wanted to know if he could vote on a plan to save the jobs of four city firefighters (he had already participated in the matter).