City Related

The FBI had to work hard for years to get a grand jury indictment of former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin yesterday (a searchable PDF of the indictment is attached; see below).

A lot of what occurred could have been stopped a long time ago if the city and state had better ethics laws and the city's ethics board was able to initiate complaints and hold public hearings on ethics issues that came to its attention. It appears that every time I read the indictment of a mayor or council...

Here's an odd ethics program rule. According to an article last week in the Advocate-Messenger, the Boyle County, KY ethics commission, which has jurisdiction over all the municipalities in the county, requires that a town council vote on whether a matter may be referred to the ethics commission.

It would be really helpful if people could find recommendations for ethics reform all in one place, but this rarely happens. Ethics task forces and ethics commissions that ask for such recommendations from good government groups, officials, and academics rarely make them available to the public online. Collections of such recommendations would be a useful resource both for those interested in government ethics in the particular city or county, and for those elsewhere who are considering ethics...

It can never be said too often that the quality of a government ethics code is meaningless. What matters is how the ethics program actually works.

Take Bridgeport, CT for example. It is the largest city in Connecticut, with a population of 150,000. It is a poor city in a rich county, and it has had a history of corruption, including the mayor's conviction on federal corruption charges a decade ago.

According to...

Is it enough for a local official to be "not guilty"? This is the question that has been raised with respect to a Tamarac, FL city commissioner who was found not guilty of bribery in December, according to a column by Michael Mayo this week in the Sun-Sentinel.

Soon after she was found not guilty, the governor...

Update: December 19, 2012 (see below)

I am always amazed at what contraptions people are willing to set up to justify the participation of a city attorney in the ethics program of a large city or county that has sufficient resources to hire an ethics commission staff member or independent ethics officer. I raise this issue because controversial ethics reforms are being voted on today by Fort Worth's council, and one of them includes making a city attorney's ethics advice an...