City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

Local Government Practice January 27, 2010

It's Easy As ABC to Create Poor Ethics Environments

Update: February 3, 2010 (see below) A NC Local Government Blog post yesterday made me aware that there have recently been some very public conflict of interest issues involving North Carolina's alcoholic beverage control (ABC) system, the state liquor sales program, which allows each city and coun…

Conflicts of Interest January 26, 2010

Government Employees and the Class Exception to Conflicts of Interest

Yesterday, the California Supreme Court published its decision relating to the conflict of interest charges against five members of San Diego's pension board, which I discussed a couple months ago in a blog post. Needless to say, the court completely disagreed with me. It felt that being part of a …

Transparency & Disclosure January 26, 2010

Use of Private E-Mail Accounts for Public Business

I continue to be thankful for Sarah Palin's incredible ability to get pedestrian government ethics issues into the public eye. This time it's the use of private e-mails for public business, according to an article in yesterday's New York Times. There are lots of new rules about using government com…

Ethics Codes & Reform January 25, 2010

Officials' Personal Opinions and the Separation of Aspirational and Enforceable Ethics Provisions

Many local government ethics codes have a provision that, when officials publicly give personal opinions rather than the government's position, requires them to clearly state that they are not representing the local government. Here's the one from the ethics code in Santa Clarita (CA) where, accord…

Conflicts of Interest January 24, 2010

Officials Requesting Police Investigations of Political Opponents: A Serious Misuse of Office

Which is the more troubling misuse of office? A local government official having a citizen arrested for criticizing him, or a local government official using tax dollars to pay off a citizen so that it doesn't come out that the politician has influence over whom the police arrest? This choice of ev…

Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play January 23, 2010

Citizens United and Conflicts of Interest Law

The Citizens United decision from the Supreme Court this week says that, for the purpose of First Amendment free speech rights in a political context, corporations are persons. Until now, they were considered fictional persons, since they lack such things as arms, brains, and the right to vote. Wil…

Resources & Learning January 21, 2010

Resources

This page will contain an overview of the resources available on the City Ethics site. This is a work in progress, but check out the sub-menus under the "Resources" Menu button.

January 20, 2010

Exempting Special Developer Board Members from City Ethics Code in Dallas

According to a January 15 memorandum, a week from today the Dallas city council will be considering an amendment to the city's ethics code, which would exclude municipal management district (MMD) board members from the ethics code (it has already been approved by the council's economic development …

January 19, 2010

SC Bill on Local Government Budget Transparency

When I started getting involved with my town's government several years ago, I quickly found that limited access to budget and other financial information was a serious problem. The town government would not even put the annual budget online, despite the fact that my town has town meetings to discu…

Local Government Practice January 18, 2010

Lessons from Mistakes Made in a Connecticut City

Assuming you can learn a lot from the mistakes made in local government ethics matters in cities and towns other than your own, there is a great deal to learn from a simple ethics matter that, through a number of mistakes, oversights and, apparently, partisanship has been turned into a big issue in…

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