City Related

Here's a new role for an ethics commission:  mediator in a dispute between other government oversight offices. According to an article in the Advocate last week, New Orleans' ethics board has appointed two of its members to mediate in an ongoing dispute between the city's Inspector General and its new...

According to a recent Reader Supported News article, ethics allegations have been made in Montpelier regarding two high-level officials. Both allegations are worthy of a closer look.

According to the article, the mayor of Montpelier, the state capital, is a lawyer with a firm that represents two major national banks. The city's director...

According to an article yesterday in the Seguin (TX) Gazette, there will be a perfectly ordinary local government ethics occurrence next Monday in Seguin, a town of 25,000 outside San Antonio: the city's ethics commission will meet in closed session to discuss a recently filed ethics complaint.

There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with this. But there are two...

A month ago, I wrote about some problems Honolulu's ethics program was having with the corporation counsel. The problems have continued. The big issue this last week has been the corporation counsel's provision of ethics advice. So far, the argument has primarily taken place in the form of memos.

The corporation counsel responded in an October 25 memo to questions directed to it by the...

The long-running Carrigan case (Carrigan I, that is) may have finally come to an end. And it's a very good end. After the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Carrigan's absurd argument that a council member has a First Amendment free speech right to vote on legislative matters where he is conflicted, the Nevada Supreme Court concluded that, if a council member chooses not to seek ethics advice and votes on a matter involving someone with whom he has a special relationship, he cannot say...

Now that Tallahassee's mayor has opposed all of the recommendations from a special ethics advisory panel (attached; see below), according to an article last week in the Tallahassee Democrat, it's about time to look at those recommendations and what, it appears, is going to happen to them.