Safra Working Papers

"Why hire a lawyer to do an internal investigation? It’s because you get the privileges. Otherwise, you’d save a little money and hire a consultant or accountant." These are the wise words of Bruce A.

I've written a few times about the ways local government officials misuse charitable organizations (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). But there are still charities-related issues I've missed.

Found this site today:
http://www.governmentdocs.org/
Their Description: www.governmentdocs.org was created to advance the values of open and accountable government. This site gives the public an unprecedented level of access to government documents by allowing users to browse, search, and review hundreds of thousands of pages acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other public disclosure, or “sunshine,” laws."

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.

For the second time in a year, a local ethics commission has been the subject of a grand jury report. The first was San Francisco's (see my blog post). There, it was a civil grand jury and the focus was on the commission. Here and now, it is a criminal grand jury, and the focus is on the county executive and other officials, as well as ethics commission members. The county is Suffolk, on Long Island, a suburban county of 1.5 million people.

A local lobbying law is only as good as its enforcement, especially when local government leaders provide no leadership.

According to a column by Scott Cooper Williams in the Green Bay (WI) Press Gazette yesterday, Green Bay passed a lobbying registration law three years ago and, since that time, only seven lobbyists, representing two total clients, registered.

The dream of every ethics commission is to have a guaranteed budget. But it is not really a dream for two reasons. One, there are ethics commissions with guaranteed budgets. And two, it is a reasonable policy that can be countered only by a local legislative body's need for control. This blog post will look at the arguments for and against a guaranteed budget, as well as several examples of and approaches to guaranteeing budgets for ethics commissions and similar independent bodies and agencies.

The Arguments For and Against

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? In English: Who will guard the guardians? This is a question many people ask about ethics commissions. But the question I would like to raise is, Is this the right question to ask?

The great majority of what is written about legislative redistricting focuses on state and federal redistricting. But many cities, even some towns, have districts too, and resetting district boundaries is an important political process designed to prevent public participation and to undermine public trust.

The boom years of the Oughts were very good to Gwinnett County, a suburban Atlanta county of 800,000 that grew by a third in the last decade. But boom times are rarely good for local government ethics, and Gwinnett County appears to be no exception.

In this second of three blog posts on ethics reform in Gwinnett County, Georgia, I will look at recommendations for ethics reform made by a grand jury in its October 2010 report, and by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia in its 2007 report commissioned by the board of county commissioners

This third of three posts on ethics reform in Gwinnett County, Georgia looks at the county officials' response to the recommendations in the 2007 report drafted by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia, and in the grand jury's October 2010 report.

Trust in government is a requirement for participation in government, what the authors of Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life refer to as "civic membership." This is strongest at the local level, where we are most likely to get involved in person rather than through phone calls, petitions, contributions, and voting.

Indefinite conflicts can cause a lot of problems for officials. They see them as not yet ripe, not something they should have to deal with yet. But others see them as looming in the future, and want to know how the official plans to deal with them. One such indefinite conflict is the subject of controversy in Tampa, where a council candidate is the executive director of a nonprofit organization that has a large contract with the city to build affordable apartments. This sort of indefinite conflict comes up a lot.

Posted on January 24th, 2014 on the Harvard Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics Blog:

What do the BP oil spill and local government ethics have in common? Kenneth Feinberg.

Today's Hartford Courant gives us an excellent picture of a very creative way of making the municipal government work for you, conflicts of interest be damned. The municipal entrepreneur in this instance is Abraham L. Giles, referred to as a 'North End political boss.' His scheme involves vulnerable city residents -- evicted tenants.

The last Congress is known for doing very little, but a couple of weeks ago it actually passed a bill that will have a serious effect on local government ethics: the Hatch Act Modernization Act of 2012 According to a press release on the bill, it "removes the federal prohibition on most state and local government employees who want to run for partisan political office.