City Related

Here's an interesting twist. The mayor of Watervliet, Michigan (pop. 1,900) resigned in protest after the city commission interviewed one of its own members for the apparently paid position of city treasurer, according to an article in the Herald Palladium on Tuesday.

The commission (six commissioners and the mayor, who votes only to break ties) chose to interview one of its members after the city attorney advised not to do so.

What is the worst local campaign finance violation? According to an article yesterday from the Los Angeles Daily News, it appears to be political money laundering. Mark Abrams, a former Beverly Hills developer, was fined $108,000 yesterday, and $270,000 for similar violations back in 2005.

According to an article in the Vancouver Sun, the mayor of Vancouver, BC is concerned about the conflict between his chairing the city's police board and his role in approving the police budget. He said, "It's difficult for me to advocate directly to the mayor on behalf of the police board because I am the mayor."

According to an article in the Palm Beach Daily News, Florida law "forbids government bodies from advocating for voters to vote yes or no in a referendum election, and from spending funds to advertise for that purpose." But as with all laws, there are ways to end-run this prohibition, and the town of Palm Beach's council and city attorney found a way.

Citizen indifference and lack of participation is the most damaging result of a lack of trust in government officials. One reason is that a vicious circle is created. When government officials are untrustworthy, and especially when they use intimidation to create the sort of fear that severely cuts into citizen participation, there are fewer people to watch over them on behalf of the public. This makes government officials feel more fearless and act more self-serving and more openly intimidating. And so on.

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

There's a lot to learn from the chief of New Orleans' emergency medical service's past conflicts of interest, which have only recently become public. Despite the compassion one must feel for the official, the conflicts were poorly handled by her and by the former mayor and his administration.

There's a new twist to the ethics mess in Stamford, which I described in a blog post last week.

I've written several blog posts about the criminal trials of a Baltimore council member and the former Baltimore mayor, focusing on their successful legislative immunity defenses (1 2 3 4). However, the former mayor was convicted of embezzling

In the Indiana Secretary of State race, the headlines are all about voter fraud. But the bigger problem, I think, involves the failure of one of the candidates to differentiate himself from his seat on the Fishers city council.