City Related

Should the Josephson Institute's Five Principles of Public Ethics be enforceable by a local government? And if not, why not?

Article I of Allen Park, MI's charter consists of the five Josephson Institute principles, plus one more about "congeniality and productivity." Here...

Gifts to a local official can fall between jurisdictional cracks, as shown in an article today in the New York Times. They can also fall between definitional cracks. And between these cracks it's gray.

The article reports that, a couple of years ago, Newark NJ's mayor, Cory Booker, who is running for U.S. Senate, was given money by several high-tech...

Once again, the failure to work out in advance the relationship between an ethics commission and an inspector general's office has led to the locking of horns in the midst of an ethics proceeding. This time the location of the turf war is the District of Columbia.

Here's an interesting case study from Hartford, CT. The facts come from an NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters post from Friday and a report of the city's Chief Auditor dated June 27, 2013.

In October 2011,...

On Friday, New Orleans' Inspector General, who works for the city's ethics board, sent off two letters relating to the auditor for the Orleans Parish sheriff's office. One letter was sent to the state's ethics board, which has jurisdiction over local officials, requesting that it take "appropriate action."...

When it comes to conflicts of interest, is a local government attorney primarily an attorney or a local government official? I would answer this question, "Definitely an official." But recently the New Jersey Supreme Court answered this question, "Definitely an attorney." In fact, had the attorney been an administrator, the opinion suggests, the court's decision would have been different.

The opinion focuses on the standard for determining whether the decision of a local government...