Recusal/Withdrawal

One of the things that always fascinates me is that, while politicians have no problem asking experts legal, financial, engineering, or human resource questions, they feel they know what they need to know about government ethics questions.

Take D.C. council member Vincent Orange. According to an article yesterday on the WAMU-FM website, for the third time he introduced a...

Update: June 20, 2012 (see below)

The saying goes that there are two sides to every story. But more commonly there is a story and ways to spin the story. The problem is telling them apart.

This week, a Daily Oklahoman editorial took to task the state ethics commission, which has jurisdiction over local officials. The editorial's...

Update: July 17, 2012 (see end of this post)

Here's an interesting conflict situation from Concord, NH. According to a recent article in the Concord Patch, a state representative filed ethics complaints against Concord's mayor and one of the city's council members. Since the mayor and city manager had not selected members for the city's ethics board, which was...

A poor and disconcerting judicial decision on local legislative immunity came down on May 24 from the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, Kickapoo Tribe v. Black.

The tribe made the argument in its brief that a watershed district...

Here's an interesting conflict situation from San Mateo County, CA. According to an article in yesterday's Almanac, prosecutors are investigating the selection by two school boards of a project architect for construction projects at the same time that the project architect was remodeling the house of a district official.

Here's an interesting conflict situation out of Forsyth County, Georgia. According to an article in the Forsyth News, a county commissioner owns a company that buys county water and sells it to county residents who used to have wells. The company owns the infrastructure that supplies water to four subdivisions in the county. It is one of several companies that do this. The companies are charged the flat...