Safra Working Papers

Conflicts of Interest March 1, 2009

Labor Peace Through Unethical Conduct

Rarely does an ethics commission get a clear chance to show it has no favoritism. The Nevada Commission on Ethics will soon get that chance.

The Nevada senator who raised a legislative immunity defense last year against the commission was accused of a conflict of interest due to his position as president of the Las Vegas chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), a nonunion contractors association.
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Transparency & Disclosure July 29, 2010

Lack of Transparency and Voter Indifference Can Make a Big Difference

Update: September 23, 2010 (see below)

Lack of transparency and voter indifference, especially relating to technical issues, are often considered minor issues not central to local government ethics. What happened the last few years in Bell, California (pop. 37,000; Los Angeles County) should make people think again about how central transparency and citizen participation are to preventing unethical conduct by local government officials.

Transparency
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Ethics Codes & Reform May 12, 2008

Law + Character Do Not = Ethics

According to a recent article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth's mayor, Mike Moncrief, made $633,000 last year from the oil and gas business. He also has an interest in several real estate developments. A committee, appointed by the mayor and council, will soon be making recommendations on rules for natural gas drilling and on fees that affect real estate development.
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Enforcement & Complaints November 26, 2013

Law Firm Turns to Logical Fallacies to Defend Its Non-Compliance with Ethics-Related Subpoenas

In New York State, lawyers are once again insisting that they are an exception to ethics laws. The Moreland Commission, a special investigatory commission called by the governor and consisting of district attorneys and other law enforcement officials, has subpoenaed the employers of several state legislators. According to an article in the Democrat and Chronicle, most of the employers quickly complied with the subpoenas and provided the requested information.
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June 9, 2009

Lawsuits, Legal Fees, and County Attorney Conflicts in El Paso Ethics Complaints Battle

In the midst of a big corruption probe, a pair of back-and-forth ethics complaints filed with a nearly toothless ethics commission in El Paso doesn't seem like much. But it does sheds some light on how much El Paso government is about the players rather than the citizens. And it touches on some issues that are important everywhere, including the use of lawsuits to cripple ethics commissions, legal fees for ethics defense, local government attorney conflicts, and city-county relations.
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Conflicts of Interest January 23, 2015

Lawyer-Client Confidentiality and Money Laundering

The arrest of New York state senate majority leader Sheldon Silver points to an ongoing institutional problem that is not limited to New York state:  the law firm as the perfect place to launder money. The reason for this is that lawyer-client confidentiality, at least as it is often practiced, allows a law firm, and the public office holders who are part of or do work for it, to keep its clients, its services, its receipts, and its payments secret.
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Ethics Codes & Reform February 7, 2009

Leadership and Obstacles to Ethics Reform

I recommend an essay by Donald Menzel from the October issue of PM, the magazine of the International City-County Management Association (ICMA), entitled "Strengthening Ethical Governance in Local Governments." Menzel is a former president of the American Society for Public Administration, author of Ethics Management for Public Administrators: Building Organizations of Integrity, and co-editor of Teaching Ethics and Values: Innovations, Strategies, and Issues in Public Administration Prog
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Local Government Practice October 9, 2010

Learning and Forming a Local Government's Unethical Environment

I chose to specialize in local government ethics because this is where it all starts. This is where the individuals who become our representatives experience their first unethical environment, become team players, learn the rules of the game, and begin to feel a special entitlement.

One good thing about election time is that we sometimes get the back stories of individuals running for higher office. We get to see how they started. One such individual is Carl Paladino, a candidate for governor of New York State.

A Local Developer Regulating Local Development
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Transparency & Disclosure May 9, 2008

Legal Advice and Government Accountability

Elizabeth Wolgast’s 1992 book, Ethics of an Artificial Person: Lost Responsibility in Professions and Organizations, raises some very important government ethics questions. I will deal with just one of them here. The term “artificial persons” includes lawyers and government officials who are considered to act in the name of others. Wolgast’s book looks at the problems such artificial persons cause with respect to our ordinary views of such ethical issues as responsibility and accountability. Too often, Wolgast says, lawyers and government officials hide behind their roles.
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