On April 30, the D.C. ethics board reached a settlement with a council member (attached; see below), whereby he was admonished for having "used the prestige of his office or his public position for the private gain" of a company by influencing health department personnel to leave the site of the business without issuing a notice of closure, allowing the business to continue to operate for several more hours.

Some important issues are raised in this matter, including (1) the line between constituent services and preferential treatment, (2) the appropriateness of a preferential treatment provision, (3) interventions of legislators and their staff in administrative matters; and (4) an ethics board's role in limiting or prohibiting constituent services.

Applicant Disclosure Is Good for Officials
If Ontario or Mississauga required broad applicant disclosure, Mississauga's mayor would not be in court this week arguing that she didn't know that her son had invested in a huge hotel and convention center deal. According to an article yesterday on the 680 News Radio site, she has been alleged to have voted with a conflict, and could be forced to resign as mayor.

The mayor has said in her defense that she didn't read a crucial document containing her son's name, because she didn't have her reading glasses. She has to plead ignorance, something that, of course, she cannot prove. Had her son been required to disclose that his mother was the mayor, she would have been alerted and she could have withdrawn. Had she not withdrawn, there would be no need for a trial.

Appearances are very important in government ethics. A situation that has arisen with respect to a proposed state audit of the Palm Beach County ethics commission has created serious appearance problems.

Yes, another New York state legislator has been arrested on bribery charges. That's scarcely news. According to an article in today's New York Times, he was helping developers get permits to open adult day care centers in his district. In other words, he was doing local constituency work as a state legislator, using his influence rather than his votes.

But that's not all. What makes this bribery case unusually egregious is his introduction of a bill to place a moratorium on the construction of competing day care centers. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York referred to the legislator's bill as “an especially breathtaking bit of corruption, even by Albany standards.”

We often hear elected officials saying, "I can't be bought at any price." The assumption behind this statement is that there is no amount of money, no job offer, nothing that will make the elected official act or vote any way than the way he otherwise intends to act or vote, that he cannot be influenced.

In a discussion forum I follow, journalist Ben Adler pointed out that there might actually be different prices for different acts. Sometimes elected officials accept gifts or campaign contributions from people who simply want to nudge them a bit this way or that, a provision or even a word, which would not go against the official's views or values at all. The price for this would presumably be low.

Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said yesterday, in reference to a sting operation that led to the arrest of several elected officials in New York City and the village of Spring Valley, NY, “A show-me-the-money culture seems to pervade every level of government.” However, that's not really the moral of the story.