Safra Working Papers

Conflicts of Interest October 13, 2009

A County Attorney's Legal Advice About the Procedure for Her Own Raise

Here's an ugly little case study, based on an ethics complaint filed in September in Hillborough County, the county which includes Tampa. According to the complaint (attached; see below), the county administrator wanted to give herself and the county attorney a 1% salary increase. Salary increases in the county must be approved by the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC). The county administrator asked the county attorney if the raises would be legal without such approval, and the county attorney said they would be, because it was a benefit all county employees were entitled to receive.
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Ethics Commissions & Administration April 25, 2012

A County Ethics Program Run by a Non-Independent Ombudsman

Although in 2008, Orange County, Florida's Ethics and Campaign Finance Reform Task Force recommended (report attached; see below) that the county have an ethics board selected by a variety of community organizations, following the model of Miami/Dade County, and Section 2-457 of the county ordinances did provide for (with liberal use of the magic word "may") an ethics advisory board to be selected by the chief judge of the local circuit, Orange County does not appear to have an ethics board.
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Transparency & Disclosure June 30, 2008

A Couple of Good Local Government Approaches to Transparency and Citizen Feedback

The Internet provides all sorts of opportunities for both transparency and citizen feedback. One way, which I pointed out recently, is for local government officials to have blogs that allow them to present their news and views, and allow citizens to respond and ask questions.

Two other approaches have just been taken by towns near where I live.

Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.
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Local Government Practice February 16, 2007

A Course in Running for Local Office

One of the best ways to create a more ethical environment in local government is to have more people run for office. The more people who run for office, the more pressure is put on the closed world that many local governments preserve. This closed world is preserved through the lack of interest not only of voters, but also of potential candidates, who feel the only way to get elected is to know the right people in the right way.
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January 20, 2009

A Criminal Failure

I hate to harp so often on the problem of ethics matters being handled by criminal authorities, but when I read an article in the Nogales (AZ) International that begins as follows, I get angry.
    While there was “ample evidence of incompetence,” it took more than two years for Nils Urman, former Santa Cruz County Commerce and Economic Development Director, to be cleared of criminal wrongdoing by the Arizona Attorney
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Ethics Commissions & Administration July 13, 2010

A Crippling Case of Ethics Self-Enforcement

I recently wrote a blog post about a false statements in elections law in Ohio, and the problems with enforcing such laws. I have often written about the problems with self-enforcement of ethics laws. In the Wisconsin case of a state supreme court justice's misrepresentations in an election ad, the two have come together, big-time. The result is far more injurious, even crippling, to public trust in the judiciary than the original misrepresentations.
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Ethics Commissions & Administration July 15, 2015

A Critique of New Orleans' Ethics Program

David A. Marcello, the Executive Director of the Public Law Center at Tulane University Law School in New Orleans, has been keeping close tabs on New Orleans' troubled ethics program. In 2011, he published a report on how Hurricane Katrina (2005) led New Orleans' officials to turn a moribund ethics program into one of the best local government ethics programs in the U.S., at least on paper.
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Transparency & Disclosure March 24, 2008

A Cure for Transparency Problems: A Model Website and Blog

An essential problem in many local governments is a lack of transparency. When people do not know what is happening, and access to information is very difficult, democracy is undermined in several ways. Reformers have a difficult time showing what is actually happening or preparing for public meetings and public hearings. Newspapers are dependent on what officials say. Ordinary citizens become indifferent or completely turned off when all news is of the he said-she said variety. Where there is little transparency, there is usually a reason to keep things hidden.
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Conflicts of Interest April 13, 2012

A De Minimis Conflict in a De Maximis Situation

Here's an interesting conflict question. According to an article in the Tewksbury Patch this week, a special town meeting in Tewksbury, MA will soon vote on whether to go to referendum on the question of replacing the town meeting with a council. The question is whether the elected town meeting moderator, who gets a $450 stipend for his work, has a conflict that will require him not to moderate the special town meeting, because he has a financial interest in preserving the town meeting and, therefore, his stipend.
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February 29, 2008

A Dream Machine

See 1/16/09 addendum at bottom The dream of every machine politician is to have his city controlled by those who work for him. Unfortunately, every city has citizens who don’t work for the city administration. Or so I thought until I learned about Vernon, California. Vernon is “an exclusively industrial city,” which is a fancy term for one big conflict of interest. Here’s how it works, according to the Economist and a wonderful fictional dialogue by public administration professor H.
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