Conflicts of Interest

A no-bid or improperly bid contract cannot help but create an appearance of impropriety. And yet not only do elected officials keep defending them, but they also refuse to acknowledge the appearance of impropriety that surrounds every one of them, especially when elected officials and their family …

According to an editorial in the Press Democrat, the city council in Santa Rosa (CA), a city of about 150,000 north of San Francisco, has postponed consideration of an ordinance requiring city lobbyists to register, supposedly due to complaints from nonprofits who do not want to pay the $120 fee. (…

Update: April 29, 2010 (see below) The idea of a possible conflict of interest should not be an excuse for a fishing expedition to find relationships between local government legislators and people or contracts they vote on. This appears to be what is happening in Crossville, a town of 9,000 in eas…

Gray areas in local government ethics don't necessarily have to be gray areas. According to an article last week in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a council member whose brother is a lieutenant in the city jail has been very vocal in opposing a plan to lease the jail to the county in which Atlan…

Officials soliciting charitable contributions from those doing business before them is unethical conduct too many ethics codes allow, often expressly. Miami-Dade County has in its ethics code what appears at first to be a very reasonable exception to the definition of a gift: §2-11.1(2)(2)(g) Gifts…

Today I came across the Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington (State) website. MRSC is "private, non-profit organization based in Seattle," whose mission is "to promote excellence in Washington local government through professional consultation, research and information services." Si…

What do you do when an official discriminates against you by sicking a local government inspector on you? This question was raised by David Owens in a post on the NC Local Government Law Blog. Owens' answer is that (at least in North Carolina), unless you can show evidence of a pattern of conscious…

Local governments accepting gifts from those who do business with them — contractors, developers, and the like — can cause some serious problems, even when they have to be approved by neutral bodies. This can be seen by what has happened in Middletown, CT, a small city not far from where I live. Ac…

After all the problems San Diego pension boards have had with conflicts of interest (see my blog post from November 2009), one would think they would be extra-sensitive to further conflicts. But, alas, not in this case. Last September, the San Diego County Employees Retirement Association (SDCERA) …

The tendency of local government ethics codes to limit conflicts to financial interests is one of my pet peeves. A current matter in Tacoma shows the downside of this limited definition of interests that can conflict. According to a recent article in the News-Tribune, a council member worked on the…