Update: September 17, 2011 (see below)

An article in yesterday's Stamford Advocate keeps asking the question, Who should pay? The article is referring to attorney's fees related to an ethics proceeding. Most ethics codes do not deal with this issue, and therefore it often turns into a big political controversy after the fact, leaving a bad taste in citizens' mouths, especially if they are forced to foot the bill.

For this reason, it should be clear from the start who pays, under what circumstances, and how much.

When there is a time period in an ethics code investigation or hearing provision, there is always the question:  What happens if some event does not take place within the designated time period? Does that mean that the complaint is automatically dismissed?

This issue arises due to a Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court (an appellate court) decision dated March 17 in the case of G. L. v. State Ethics Commission. My thanks to Patty Salkin's Law of the Land blog for posting about this decision.

Another interesting ethics matter is raised in the article on the school board member in Santa Clara County (CA), which I discussed earlier today.

The DA's office notes that the contractor, for whom the school board member had worked as a subcontractor, had no obligation to disclose the conflict, so no charges were filed against it. The DA does not take the next step and ask why this obligation doesn't exist.

Prof. Patricia Salkin, director of the Government Law Center at Albany Law School and author of the Law of the Land blog, has published another of her regular roundup of what's been happening recently in the ethics of land use. Her focus is on cases that have gone to court. I will be discussing a few of the cases in this and further blog posts.

Update: October 15, 2010 (see below)

Decision-makers are given too much credit. Most individuals who vote on government matters are non-professionals who are paid little or nothing, and who rarely focus on the matters before their body. They are, therefore, very dependent on staff members who are professionally trained and who are paid to focus on the matters before the body.

And yet, according to an article in the Indianapolis Star, the Indiana State Ethics Commission recently decided that the general counsel, chief legal adviser, and chief administrative law judge to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (all one person) was allowed to take a job with the regulatory division of the state's largest electric supplier days after leaving his job with the IURC.

Update: October 8, 2010 (see below)

There's a fascinating ethics controversy going on in Stamford, CT which raises a number of issues involving time limits, the enforcement of declarations of policy, intimidation, and the roles of ethics commissions and inspectors general.