County Related

According to an article in the Washington Post, two weeks ago, a public campaign financing bill (attached; see below) was introduced, cosponsored by all council members of Montgomery County, MD, a suburb of Washington, DC with about one million inhabitants, home to Silver Spring, Bethesda, Rockville, and Gaithersburg.

What should an ethics program do when an agency or department takes ethics advice and enforcement into its own hands? This issue has arisen in Hawaii County, according to two articles in West Hawaii Today, one from two years ago, the other from last week.

This week, the Broward County (FL) inspector general filed a Review of the Existing Ethics Structure (attached; see below) of the countywide ethics program that he oversees, and which came into being via charter amendments overwhelmingly approved by the county's voters in late 2010. The 21-page report focuses on a two-part reform recommendation:  (1) an ethics officer who would uniformly interpret the Code and provide precedential advisory opinions, and

Here is a concrete example of the problem of allowing local government attorneys to provide ethics advice that protects local officials, a problem that Florida state senator Jeff Clemens and the Florida League of Cities want to harden into state law in SB 606 (see my recent blog post for a discussion of the problem).

I am a proponent of ethics waivers. But only if they are provided by an independent ethics commission. When they are provided by high-level officials or their appointees, they appear to be self-serving. Why self-serving? Because they create precedents that will enable those who make the precedents to themselves get ethics waivers.

According to an article in the Capital Gazette, a former Anne Arundel County (MD) county executive, who was convicted early this year of a misdemeanor for misconduct in office, wants to run for office again, despite the judge ordering, as part of the criminal penalty, that he not be permitted to run for office for five years.

Sometimes, conflict of interest matters come disguised as election law matters. Most of the time, due to secrecy, laziness, or an inability to draw lines between the dots, no one recognizes the conflict of interest matter. But sometimes, someone gives the game away, and it becomes clear how inextricable the two areas can be.

A Bakersfield Californian editorial on Saturday points out the kinds of conflict situation that arise when, to save money, a coroner office is brought into a sheriff or police department office.

In an April 2013 blog post, I wrote about the problems surrounding a Florida state senator's request for a state audit of Palm Beach County's EC. That report, drafted by the state legislature's Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, has recently been published, and it includes the EC's response to the report (attached; see below).

What can a local official do when he is required to withdraw from a matter that involves a close personal friend who's in hot water due to that official's feud with another official? What do you do when you're caught between a rock and a hard place? The district attorney of Putnam County, NY is faced with this odd and difficult mix of personal and public obligations, at least if what he is saying is true.