I've noted on several occasions that indirect conflicts are among the
most problematic areas in government ethics. Blind
Spots:
Why
We
Fail
to
Do
What's
Right
and
What to Do about It, a new book by
Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel (Princeton University Press),
looks into some of the psychological aspects of the indirectness
problem. The authors' analysis is especially relevant to the
use of...
On February 10, 2008, Bobby Jindal, the newly elected governor of
Louisiana, said in a
big speech:
Today, we take the first step towards building a better Louisiana where
our ethics laws are the gold standard - letting the rest of the world
know that corruption will no longer find a home here. The actions that
we will take over the coming days will have...
According to an
op-ed
piece by a county commissioner from Collier County, Florida (in the
Naples Daily News), two interesting twists on the gift to an
official's favorite charity gambit occurred recently. Gifts to officials'
favorite charities are a common way to get around pay-to-play laws.
Here is what...
You can
learn something from every local government ethics code there is, and especially from codes that have only been proposed. Today I'm going to look at a
proposed ethics code for Glen Ellyn, IL,
a western suburb of Chicago (pop. 27,000). The proposed code
and resolution are attached; see below.
According to an
article yesterday on seacoastonline.com, a committee of the Select
Board of North
Hampton, NH (pop. 4,500) brought to the Select Board its concern
about the town administrator dealing with health insurance issues when
he was on the board of the...
What can local government ethics professionals learn from what has come out in the
recent indictments of former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, his
father, the city's
director of water and sewerage, Kilpatrick's CAO and CIO, and a city
contractor?