City Related

With apologies to Louisiana, since this week I've already focused on its legislators' dispute with its Board of Ethics, I'm going to return to the state to discuss a situation where local government ethics can make a great difference.

On the front page of today's New York Times, an article looks at reasons why so little money has made it from Washington to local government infrastructure...

Who should and who should not sit on elections commissions? Other than land-use commissions (and, sadly, ethics commissions), elections commissions are probably the most abused in terms of membership.

Take the election commission in Hamblen County, according to the March 7-10, 2007 entries in the noe4accountability blog. It has five members. One has a son running for the county commission, one is the father of a mayor in the county (who is...

Those who have been closely following the dismissal of U.S. Attorneys by the Bush Administration may know that one of them involves a U.S. Attorney who did not move fast enough with an investigation into possible kickbacks relating to the building of a county courthouse in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Yesterday, according to an article in the Albuquerque Tribune, a former Albuquerque mayor, and two...

Laws are highly over-rated. This is one reason why the City Ethics Model Code Project is not just about codes, but the centerpiece of a wide-ranging discussion of all the issues involved in creating, improving, and maintaining local government ethics programs.

Laws may be too highly over-rated, but budgets and priorities are too often under-rated. Take Denver. Denver requires political candidates to disclose the employers and occupations of anyone who gives them $200 or more. And yet...

Early on, I did a blog entry on apology. I even included apology in 107(1) of the Model Ethics Code, as a stated option for officials, so that their municipality does not have to go to the trouble of investigating their actions and holding hearings.

Yesterday, I attended a lecture by Nancy Berlinger of the Hastings Center in Garrison, NY on apology in the medical context. I think...