City Related

In June, the Phoenix council took a step toward ethics reform, based on the recommendations of a task force (I critiqued the task force recommendations in an April post entitled "Disappointing Report from Ethics Task Force in Phoenix"). What the council did was approve...

Does a council member who is a realtor have a conflict with respect to any council matter that affects real estate, including a matter that affects property values ? That appears to be the view of NJ Superior Court Judge Grasso in a decision this week, according to an article in Thursday's Asbury Park Press.

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...

In January, I wrote a blog post about the District of Columbia ethics board's first public forum seeking recommendations for ethics reform. On April 17, the ethics board published a report that makes recommendations for improvements to the city's ethics program (attached; see below).

Of the five recommendations I made in my testimony to the D.C. board, only one of them...

“The real issue is who’s giving money and real transparency. We’re going to do this in a way that’s above board. We’re each going to be contributing our ethical and moral standards that we have been living our lives by.”

—New Haven mayoral candidate Matthew Nemerson on why he's not going to participate in the New Haven Democracy Fund, one of the few municipal public campaign financing programs in the U.S. He says that instead he will make campaign contributions public within 48...

According to a column in today's New York Times and a visit to the New York City Business Integrity Commission's (BIC) website, the BIC provides three easy lessons in how not to run an oversight commission. The BIC has jurisdiction over the private waste carting industry,...