City Related

Back to New York City, where more information is coming out about the special “slush” funds given out to city council members. According to an article in yesterday’s New York Times and an editorial in today’s, one member has, in recent years, given more than $400,000 in city funds to a nonprofit agency, run by some of his closest aides, which does almost nothing but hand money on to other organizations, and yet somehow is i

What’s been happening recently in Lincoln, Nebraska, concerning city officials having contracts with the city, provides food for thought on a few basic conflicts of interest issues. One issue is whether city officials and employees should be allowed to have contracts with the city. Or are full and open bidding provisions enough?

Once again, the New York Times has an article today that touches on municipal ethics issues. A municipal scandal does wonders. This time the issue is campaigns hiring relatives of city council candidates. It happens all the time, and it’s not illegal (in New York City and most of the country), but as Susan Lerner, the executive director of New York Common Cause, is quoted as saying, “It’s the type of thing which makes ordinary voters suspicious of the motives of candidates.

Today’s New York Times has an article that focuses on John McCain’s dealings with a big Arizona developer, Donald Diamond. There are two issues here that I would like to bring up. First, the ultimate defense, which McCain’s campaign employs: helping a constituent. McCain “had done nothing for Mr. Diamond that he would not do for any other Arizona citizen.” Diamond is not any other constituent. He traveled with McCain during the early primaries in 2000, and is on the campaign trail again this year.

In a long and very important article in today’s New York Times about the conflicts of interest of so-called television and radio network military analysts, one analyst says that the network he works for asked few questions about analysts’ outside business interests, the nature of their work, or the potential of that work to create conflicts of interest. “The worst conflict of interest was no interest,” he said. Hiring military analysts who work for military contractors and whose writing is vet

Earmarks are usually dealt with as a spending and democracy problem. All that money being thrown away on projects no one actually votes to fund. But earmarks are also a conflict of interest issue, as can be seen in what has come out regarding the New York City Council. I recently wrote about the transparency aspect of the Council’s hidden earmarks.

City Ethics’ very own Carla Miller (also the Jacksonville Ethics Officer) is in the news this week with an important municipal ethics dispute.

04/16/2008
by David Chapman
Staff Writer
From: http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=49846

As of Tuesday, discussions between the City Ethics Commission and Office of General Counsel were ongoing about how to handle the issue of 10 area lobbyists not in compliance with new code requirements regarding disclosure of clients.

Many municipal codes of ethics, including the City Ethics Model Code (Section 100(15)), contain a provision prohibiting the acceptance of fees and honoraria for articles, appearances, or speeches. Today’s New York Times Science section contains an article about research scientists starting to refuse fees and honoraria.

People use sunshine laws to retaliate against political opponents (it’s easy to find technical violations and use them to show an opponent is not being open; and you don’t even have to find them: newspapers write up baseless allegations just the same). But it is rare that sunshine laws lead to fisticuffs.