Safra Working Papers

June 26, 2009

An Arrogant Response to an Ethics Report

It's not easy to publicize ethical and unethical activity in a responsible manner. And when this is done, it can sometimes lead to false attacks on the the legitimacy of the organization doing the publicizing. This is what happened this week in Colorado.
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Local Government Practice September 11, 2009

An Attempt to Extend Legislative Immunity to Exclude Testimony and the Vagueness of "Regulated by the City"

A new argument has been made in the legislative immunity part of the case against a Baltimore council member who is now the mayor. In a memorandum to dismiss a new indictment (attached; see below), filed on September 8, the mayor has argued, on pages 3-10, that testimony by someone who attended events which the mayor attended in her legislative capacity cannot be used against her.
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November 6, 2013

An Audit Report on the Palm Beach County EC

In an April 2013 blog post, I wrote about the problems surrounding a Florida state senator's request for a state audit of Palm Beach County's EC. That report, drafted by the state legislature's Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, has recently been published, and it includes the EC's response to the report (attached; see below).
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March 30, 2010

An EC Reports on a Legislator Who Resigned His Way Out of Its Jurisdiction

Here's another blog post about a Georgian who wants out of EC jurisdiction.

Some ethics commissions, especially state ethics commissions, have no jurisdiction over officials once they leave office. Especially when ECs require confidentiality regarding complaints until probable cause is found, this lack of jurisdiction allows officials to resign before their unethical conduct becomes public. And it allows officials to evade enforcement.
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September 11, 2013

An Entertaining Film About the Mishandling of a Conflict Situation

When I put in the DVD yesterday evening, I did not expect the movie Admission (2013; written by Karen Croner, based on a novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd) to be a revelatory movie about the mishandling of conflicts of interest situations. But it is. Not in government (it's about a university admissions employee), but the situations are easily applicable.
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May 2, 2005

An ethical approach to business

City would link incentives, behavior By Steve Patterson Times-Union staff writer - published in 2000 in the Jacksonville Times Union Racism charges at the Adam's Mark hotel chain are helping fuel an ethical debate at Jacksonville City Hall. Citing the massive downtown hotel project as an example, members of the city Ethics Commission are pondering whether companies that receive taxpayer money to move to Jacksonville should have to prove they do business in an ethical manner.
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August 28, 2008

An Ethical Sinkhole in Connecticut

What do sinkholes and poor drainage in a newly-built highway have to do with government ethics? Often, they are the result of incompetence. But they are also often the result of unethical conduct.

That seems to be the cause in Connecticut's big highway mess that has slowly been unveiled over the last two-and-a-half years, most recently in an article in the September issue of Connecticut magazine. The mess involves improvements to a 3-mile strip of Interstate 84, a $60-million  project whose cost has been increased by about $50 million, so far.
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January 24, 2011

An Ethics Board Chair Who Should Not Have Been on the Board Refuses to Discuss His Own Conflict

The most underrated aspect of accountability is the need for government officials to honestly and publicly explain why they do what they do. This need is strongest for two groups of officials:  elected representatives and their watchdogs.

It is, therefore, painful to see the chair of a major county board of ethics refusing to even speak to the press about his own possible conflict of interest. You can see it, too, in a video at the WGN-TV website.
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Ethics Codes & Reform March 7, 2013

An Ethics Code in a Charter

In this, the third blog post on the Colorado ethics commission situation, I would like to look at the problems that can arise from placing an ethics code in a constitutional document, either a charter or, as in the Colorado case, the state constitution.
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Enforcement & Complaints November 20, 2013

An Ethics Complaint Against a Lawyer on a Local EC

Many people think that lawyers make the best ethics commission members. In fact, many ethics codes require that at least some members of an ethics commission be lawyers.

However, lawyers are the individuals most likely to have relationships and obligations that conflict with the obligations they have as EC members. For example, they often have relationships with elected officials, who are often lawyers themselves, as well as with clients who seek special benefits from the local government. And they often represent clients before their local government's agencies and bodies.
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