Safra Working Papers

September 8, 2010

Jacksonville's Charter Review Commission

The Jacksonville City Council's Sub-Committee on the Charter Review Commission's (which only meets every 10 years) findings met yesterday 07-09-2010 to hear public testimony on any aspects of the CRC's findings. There were about 20 people who spoke, and all but one were there to encourage the committee to implement the Jacksonville Ethics Commissions recommendations regarding inclusion of the Ethics Commission in the city's charter.
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Ethics Codes & Reform December 3, 2007

Jacksonville's Recent Ethics Code Revisions

Jacksonville's Ethics Commission recently went through a two year revision process of their City's Ethics Code. The resulting updates were finally ratified by the City Council last Tuesday night. See the Times Union article below... Note that I will get the code revisions up in a separate blog entry later.

From: https://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/113007/opl_221526913.shtml.

The Florida Times-Union

November 30, 2007

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January 17, 2012

Jacksonville.com - above the fold...

What’s missing from new Jacksonville ethics office? Money

No budget or staff yet, despite being adopted by City Council last summer.

Posted: January 17, 2012

Seven months after it was signed into law, Jacksonville’s Office of Ethics, Compliance and Oversight still has no budget. Its one employee, a director appointed last month, works part-time but hasn’t drawn a city paycheck since leaving an earlier job in October.

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February 22, 2008

John McCain and Me, and You

Last year, soon after I contracted to act as Administrator to the New Haven Democracy Fund, a new public campaign financing program, the Executive Director of Connecticut Common Cause called me (I sat on the board of CT Common Cause). He said that he had been asked to write a report about the Fund for the national office. My response was that I had to write a report to the State Elections Enforcement Commission, so why should he bother to write another? My report could serve both needs. He wanted me to resign from the board, and I thought that was silly.
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Enforcement & Complaints November 27, 2006

Judicial Review of Ethics Commission Decisions

This is the place to share your opinions of and experiences with judicial review of Ethics Commission decisions. For example, who should be able to seek judicial review: complainants, respondents, other interested parties, anyone? Are there situations where judicial review is inappropriate, too expensive (where there is nothing but a reprimand)? Should there be judicial review of alleged procedural irregularities?

216. Judicial Review.

Any person or entity aggrieved by a decision of the Ethics Commission may seek judicial review and relief pursuant to ----- of [state law].
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Local Government Practice September 18, 2009

Jurisdiction and Oversight Over Nonprofits Doing Local Government Work

Privatizing local government functions can cause conflict of interest problems, but at least contractors can be held to contracts and replaced when they run afoul of ethics or other laws or requirements. The same is not necessarily true when non-profit organizations take over local government functions not as contractors or grant recipients (as with social service agencies), but as partial or full replacements.
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October 17, 2013

Jurisdiction Over a Mayor-Elect, and Misconduct Disclaimers

There are two interesting wrinkles in the Forest Park, GA case I wrote about in the last blog post. According to an article in the Clayton News Daily last Friday, a former Forest Park public works director alleged in an ethics complaint that, in an e-mail message, the mayor had illegally ordered the then city manager to remove him. If true, this would be both a charter and an ethics violation in Forest Park.
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Ethics Codes & Reform July 31, 2007

Justification and Its Effect on Ethical Reasoning

One of the 'latest things' in politics today is Drew Westen, a psych professor who advises the Democrats that they should be paying more attention to emotions than to policies (as, many say, the Republicans have been doing), because people's emotional reactions have a great effect on how they vote. What is the implication for ethics of what Westen and his colleagues are saying?
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