The lead article in yesterday's New York Times was on charities set up by members of congress. I've written a few times about the use of charities to get around campaign finance and gift provisions (1 2 3), but this is an area of special creativity, where new ideas, and new reasons for regulation, arise frequently. For example, the foundation on which the article focuses employs the congressman's son, a Rialto, CA council member, as its CEO and President.

A couple of months ago, the Ohio Ethics Commission did something very wise and valuable:  it drafted an advisory opinion on nepotism rules, gathering information from years of partial, specific advisory opinions, and providing examples. It even gives excellent definitions of each of the relevant terms, including such generally applicable terms as "public contract"  and "anything of value."

Update: August 9, 2010 (see below)

You've got to hand it to them:  Broward County (FL) commissioners don't give up. Some of them have fought and fought against the prospect of having a new ethics code, written by the county ethics commission. August 10 is the deadline by which they must either approve the new ethics code, or it will appear on the November ballot.

After the county attorney's attempt in June to declare parts of the code unconstitutional or beyond the EC's authority led to a backlash against the idea of undermining the code, and then an independent lawyer's memo taking the same position also failed, there was only one possible way to stop the inevitable:  water down the code with a so-called "glitch ordinance."

In March I wrote a blog post about a situation in La Crosse, Wisconsin where the mayor brought his father, who runs a refuse business, to meet with a county official about a county solid waste assessment. A council member sought advice from the city attorney rather than the city ethics board, and then the mayor said he would put the matter before the ethics board. His father's company has a refuse contract with the mayor's city.

First Ask for an Advisory Opinion That Doesn't Match the Facts
But according to a La Crosse Tribune article in May, the mayor asked the ethics board "whether it's appropriate to participate in discussions regarding a business he isn't employed by and doesn't have an ownership stake in." His request didn't mention the meetings with the county official, to which he brought his father. In other words, it was a request for advice on a hypothetical situation, when there was a different, real situation involved. This is extremely disingenuous, and the ethics board should have refused to give an opinion.

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.

Here's an interesting modern spin on an old-fashioned nepotism/conflict of interest matter. According to an article in Tuesday's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the husband of a member of a charter school's board was hired to teach at the charter school, and there is disagreement over whether there is a conflict or not.

One twist is that the charter school's board does not have the power to hire or fire teachers at the school. Ordinary public schools don't have their own boards, so such a problem wouldn't occur.