Conflicts of Interest

Earlier this week, I wrote about an application of Louisiana ethics law that I felt was too severe. Today I'm going to write about a Louisiana ethics provision, a fairly typical gift provision that applies to local government officials, which is too weak, because it has a big loophole in it.

Ethical Leadership

In Louisiana, local government officials cannot do any sort of business with anyone who does business with their local government. This position is supported by a settlement reached with an Alexandria council member, according to an article at thetowntalk.com.

Electing local government employees to local government office can cause problems. There are constitutional protections against forbidding it, but there are conflict of interest arguments against doing it.

Massachusetts has an interesting, but I think limited ethics provision that applies to local government board members and jobs under their board's supervision:

When I saw the lead headline in Wednesday's New York Times, "In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry into Past Use," I thought of local government ethics, even though the article was about torture. Okay, I suppose I spend too much time thinking about local government ethics, but bear with me for a minute.

According to an article in Tuesday's New York Times, nonprofits are seeking an exception to the Obama administration's rule that lobbyists cannot serve in areas where they have lobbied. This raises the issue of the purpose of revolving-door provisions, which are common in local government ethics codes.

An important issue in local government ethics is how far jurisdiction should go. Recently, I did a blog entry on jurisdiction over those doing government-approved work. An article in today's New York Times raises another important jurisdictional question:  should a local government have ethics jurisdiction over those contracted to do work supported by city funds, but not paid directly by the city?

Individuals and companies doing the work of government or work approved by government, even when they do not have a direct financial relationship with government, should be within the jurisdiction of a government's ethics code. This controversial position is strengthened by what happened to many Tennessee local governments, according to a front-page article in today's New York Times.

According to an article in today's New York Times, the reason that charges were dropped against Sen. Ted Stevens is that federal prosecutors repeatedly failed to disclose information that may have helped the defense. Most of the prosecutors' misconduct was discovered and remedied, as far as possible, by the judge.

Last month, I wrote about the responsibility of lawyers and other professionals for doing something about the deeply unethical conduct of two judges in Pennsylvania who unjustly, and to their own financial benefit, incarcerated hundreds of juveniles.