Cook County assessor Joseph Berrios is becoming a regular character in this blog (see below for prior posts on him). This time he is declaring unconstitutional a law passed by the county to limit his fundraising from lawyers who appeal property tax assessments. And he has the support of a questionable opinion from the local state's attorney, according to an article in the Chicago Sun-Times yesterday.

I don't usually turn over an entire blog post to someone else, although I would like very much to do it. This letter to the editor by Kevin Haggerty, the Lackawanna County (PA) deputy director of government and community affairs (and candidate for state representative), which appeared in the Times Leader on Saturday, is too well written to summarize, and it says it all. The discussion concerns state representatives, but it equally applies to local officials.

Term limits, the recession, a new kind of governmental district, and a drive to save and manage local parks have all contributed to a fascinating ethics situation in Pierce County, Washington, home of Tacoma. Just last year I stayed in Pierce County and visited some of these parks, so this story is a little more concrete to me than most I write about.

Here are three interesting conflict of interest case studies from Tuesday's news.

Conflicts That Make You Act Differently, and Imaginative Resolutions
According to an article in the Los Angeles Daily Breeze, a former Los Angeles airport attorney, who reviewed the paperwork submitted by four companies bidding on concessions at the airport, is married to an attorney who works for a law firm that represents one of the four companies (the law firm even owns a small stake in the company). It is not clear whether the husband ever represents the company or whether he has represented the company in this matter.

An article in the Bismarck (ND) Tribune this weekend raised the issue of when a board or commission member may withdraw from a matter in which he feels he has a conflict, but where there is not a direct, pecuniary interest. It turns out that, back in 2007, the Burleigh County state's attorney had asked the attorney general for an opinion on this very issue. In that matter, a county commissioner had withdrawn from a discussion of whether or not to pave a road where relatives of his lived.

You know you're doing a pretty poor job with government ethics when a grand jury recommends that you be all but abolished. This is the case with the Broward County School Board, according to a report published on Frday. It concludes, on p. 48:

Unfortunately based on the history of this Board as an institution, we have no confIdence in their ability to make meaningful changes and to adhere to them. The solutions we see, at least short term, are to remove as much power and influence from the Board as possible and to have an independent outside authority monitor their dealings closely.