City Related

The Michigan House passed a bill in November requiring all local governments in Michigan to set up ethics boards. The bill, which amends the state ethics law, requires that ethics boards either use the state law, which is minimal, or that local governments pass their own ethics laws, with no restrictions.

One of my pet peeves is that many if not most local government ethics codes limit the definition of "conflict of interest" to situations where an official's interest involves money. But there are many personal interests that create a conflict, even though no money is involved.

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

When is a conflict sufficient to require an official to resign (or not take a position in the first place)? This question involves a lot of gray area, and little black and white. What sorts of interest are enough to undermine public trust, and what sorts of interest provide opportunities for officials to benefit unfairly from their positions? Here are three recent situations where an official's external job was seen or not seen as creating a conflict serious enough to require resignation.

Move over, presidents, movie stars, and models. Welcome a local government ethics officer to your ranks.

So much of government ethics involves the contrast, and sometimes the collision, between ethics and law. Too often the personal aspect of government ethics is overlooked. All three get twisted together in a very simple matter that occurred last week in the Escondido (CA) city council, according to an article in the North County Times.

Gifts to local governments have become an issue recently in Sacramento, CA and Richland Hills, TX. I wrote about various aspects of this issue over two years ago. It's time to raise it with respect to concrete examples.

What happens if an ethics commission enters into a settlement agreement in which an official admits to certain conduct in violation of the jurisdiction's ethics code, and then the official goes out into the world and says he did nothing wrong, but felt it was best for everyone to pay the fine and move on?

As I wrote in a blog entry nearly two years ago, Memphis has broken records in terms of convicted public officials. But its mayor of seventeen years, Willie Herenton, has stood above it all. At least until now.

When I wrote about the "industrial city" of Vernon, California a year ago, I didn't pay attention to a story that would, if it were true (allegations have been made but, as far as I know, not proven), make for a great movie, at least as dramatic as Chinatown, about municipal corruption in Southern California.