According to the blog of Kansas City, MO's mayor, Sly James, the KC Commission on Ethics Reform will be holding a public hearing tomorrow on its draft ethics code.

It's clear from the draft that the commission made excellent use of the City Ethics Model Code. The result is a good draft that falls short in a few very important areas.

Most important, the ethics commission would be selected by the mayor. The mayor would even select who the chair is, something that is ordinarily left to a board or commission. Any time the commission is seen as letting off the mayor or a mayoral ally, or coming down hard on a mayoral opponent, it will undermine the public's trust in the ethics program. There would be a big conflict at the heart of a program designed to prevent conflicts and to gain the public's trust in its city government. Ethics commission independence, real and perceived, is the single most important part of an ethics program. It is the foundation on which everything else stands.

A post yesterday in Coates' Canons: NC Local Government Law Blog raises an interesting issue about the situation of a local government candidate who has an interest in a contract with the local government which, by NC law, is prohibited not for candidates, but for a winning candidate the day he or she takes office. This provides a good occasion to look at the intersection of candidates and local government ethics codes, outside of the more common campaign finance issues.

How many hats can a local government attorney wear when it comes to government ethics? This question arises out of a state bar grievance filed against Houston's city attorney by a member of the city council.

According to an article in the Houston Chronicle last week, the council member alleged that the city attorney violated legal ethics rules by providing legal advice to her before an inspector general investigation and then to the mayor during and after the investigation. The council member also alleged that the city attorney participated in a review process that he largely designed, and that he gave legal advice on a case in which he was a witness.

According to the Wisconsin Supreme Court majority, a state legislature does not have to follow ethics laws, even ethics laws expressly designed to meet constitutional requirements. This shocking statement comes from the opinion in the case Wisconsin v. Fitzgerald, which I discussed in a recent blog post. The opinion came down on Tuesday, in a case about whether a legislative committee violated the state's open meetings act in passing the infamous government union collective bargaining bill with only two hours' notice. This post will consider this decision's effect on local government ethics, at least in Wisconsin.

It's nice when something you write about in a blog shows up on the front page of the New York Times the following day. Yesterday, in a post called "Privatization and Transparency," I discussed new types of privatization involving nonprofits, which raise new sorts of problems. One type of nonprofit operates government-funded facilities or programs, such as schools. These nonprofits are sometimes a way for organizers to make money by selling property or services to the schools. It is easier for such self-dealing to occur when the entities are not subject to transparency or ethics laws.

The Times article reports on a nonprofit charter school company whose 33 schools in Texas receive over $100 million a year in taxpayer funds. The charter school company, actually a foundation, is part of a group of foundations, affiliated with a religious movement, that operate 120 schools in 25 states.

I've written a little about ethics issues involving quasi-governmental entities and private entities doing government work (oversight, misuse, and personal financial disclosure). But there are many other issues that arise, and become problematic, when public work is done by private entities. One that has become a big issue in recent years is transparency. Although transparency laws are usually state rather than local, the same theories and considerations might be applied with respect to the application of local conflict of interest laws.