States and Municipal Ethics

The mayor of Baltimore is on trial for stealing $1,500 in gift cards, allegedly intended for poor Baltimore residents. A letter to the editor of the Baltimore Sun proposes a better approach than a trial costing hundreds of thousands of dollars:

I recently critiqued the new Michigan model local government ethics ordinance. Mark Liss, a council member in Michigan alerted me (and the world in his blog) to the new model's similarities with the...

Update: November 13, 2009 (see below)

Massachusetts has been very busy reforming its ethics laws. Most of the reforms involve the increase of penalties, plugging loopholes, banning gifts, and increasing the authority of the state ethics commission, which has jurisdiction over local government officials and employees. Highlights of the reform bill can be found in an...

An interesting disagreement has arisen over what is required for a contract with a council member to constitute a conflict of interest in California. According to an article in the Valley Chronicle, the city of Hemet and the League of California Cities disagree with a grand jury about whether a particular council member has a conflict. The council member is the executive director, and...

While on the subject of pension boards in California, it's worth mentioning a new California bill, Bill 1584, signed into law on October 18. It is an amendment to the County Employees Retirement Law of 1937 (Section 22212.5 of the Education Code, Sections 20098 and 31528 of the Government Code, with the addition of Sections 7508.5, 7513.8, 7513.85, 7513.9, and 7513.95 to...

It's been over three years since I wrote about the conflict situation of San Diego's pension board. Its members were selected by the city government labor unions and by the city, and they worked for the city. When an increase in their retirement benefits was explicitly tied to their approval of a reduction in contributions to the pension plan, the pension board members acted in their personal interest and against the interest of...