Last Saturday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a long article, "Connections Count at Law Firm," on the Washington/Atlanta-based law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge. This firm was known to me primarily as the firm behind the Pay to Pay Law Blog, a good, although too infrequent blog that looks at government ethics and campaign finance from the compliance side, that is, from the point of view of the companies that have to comply with the rules.

McKenna Long is also, according to the article, the tenth-largest lobbying firm in the country, it represents numerous government officials in ethics and election law matters, and it has many former and even current officials on staff, some of whom aren't even lawyers.

The most interesting of its "senior strategic advisors" is David Skaggs, a former congressman from Colorado and, more important, chairman of the board of the Office of Congressional Ethics, the surprisingly aggressive new part of the House ethics process. Other senior strategic advisors include Howard Dean and Zell Miller.

Recusal is a two-part process. First, the official discloses his interest in a matter that has or will come before his board or agency. Then, the official does not participate in that matter.

In Tucson, this process was distorted by the involvement of a board attorney. According to an article in Wednesday's Arizona Daily Star, the chair and vice-chair of the Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities District Board, an important development board in Tucson, were concerned about a member's possible conflict of interest and asked the board's attorney for an advisory opinion. The city of 540,000 does not appear to have an ethics officer or commission, so this was the most reasonable alternative.

It appeared to be a sign of sheer desperation when former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich's attorney, in his closing argument last week, used as a defense the fact that Blagojevich isn't "the sharpest knife in the drawer."

But actually this is a real issue, at least in government ethics. It is often hard to tell the difference between incompetence and misuse of office. Take local government attorneys, for example. Many of them consciously let officials off the hook with poor ethics advice, but many others lack both a basic understanding of government ethics and the professionalism to say so. As for local government officials, many of them also make ethical decisions without a basic understanding of government ethics, and without consulting the appropriate individuals or laws.

In March I wrote a blog post about a situation in La Crosse, Wisconsin where the mayor brought his father, who runs a refuse business, to meet with a county official about a county solid waste assessment. A council member sought advice from the city attorney rather than the city ethics board, and then the mayor said he would put the matter before the ethics board. His father's company has a refuse contract with the mayor's city.

First Ask for an Advisory Opinion That Doesn't Match the Facts
But according to a La Crosse Tribune article in May, the mayor asked the ethics board "whether it's appropriate to participate in discussions regarding a business he isn't employed by and doesn't have an ownership stake in." His request didn't mention the meetings with the county official, to which he brought his father. In other words, it was a request for advice on a hypothetical situation, when there was a different, real situation involved. This is extremely disingenuous, and the ethics board should have refused to give an opinion.

According to an article in the Tidewater News, a Franklin (VA) council member said at his first council meeting that he felt the city should stop charging interest on delinquent property taxes, since so many taxpayers are under financial duress. The council member happens to be one of those delinquent taxpayers.

Update: August 2, 2010 (see below)

I've long said that conflicts of interest should not be limited to financial interests or, in other terms, situations where a possible financial benefit or loss is involved (see, for example, this 2009 blog post). My position is confirmed by the twisted yet necessary logic in a July 28 decision of the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPCC), the state ethics body, with jurisdiction over state and local officials. And then the whole thing is undermined by wrongly allowing the use of a city attorney's advice as a defense.