Recusal/Withdrawal

In a letter to the editor in yesterday's New York Times, two lawyers who represent clients seeking to gut Arizona's Citizens Clean Elections public campaign financing program end by calling Arizona's program "a vision of unconstitutional dystopia, not free speech."

I administer the public campaign financing program in New Haven, CT. These programs are intended to...

Here's a situation from Lafayette Parish, a city of 220,000 in south-central Louisiana, which shows how when one official fails to deal responsibly with his conflicts, he is likely to be complicit in helping other officials deal irresponsibly with their conflicts and with those of their colleagues. When this official is a government attorney, it can cause an entire board or agency to deal irresponsibly with a conflict.

Wow! Get a Load of Those Salaries!
It's official. People get more upset over big salaries to government officials than over bribes, kickbacks, unbid contracts, and the like, which cost taxpayers far, far more.

When there is no formal process for dealing with a council member's conflict of interest, and the council handles the matter itself, things can get farcical. This is what is happening in Bellevue, WA. This wealthy suburb of Seattle, with a population of 120,000, has an ethics code for employees, but with no independent enforcement. Its ethics code for elected officials is just the state's limited provisions, again...

Incompatible offices is a form of conflict I have not dealt with in this blog. A good occasion to do this is a recent California attorney general's opinion interpreting the state's 2005 incompatible offices statute, which applies to local and state "public officers." The opinion provides valuable definitions, as well as useful perspectives on the idea of office incompatibility.

Without giving it any thought, it would be hard to think of a better fit than a city politician running the local chamber of commerce. After all, the goals of a chamber of commerce and of a city government are pretty much the same:  security, good government, good services, low taxes.

But when you think about it more, you realize that a chamber of commerce is not just a cheerleader for the city, but also a powerful organization that lobbies city politicians on a variety of issues,...