City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

Ethics Commissions & Administration February 19, 2009

How to Undermine Trust in the Ethics Process

Update below: The Internet has been around for some time now, and yet local government officials still get away with saying things like, “If you have a better process or procedure [than having the city council enforce the ethics code], I would like to hear about it.” According to an article yesterd…

Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play February 18, 2009

Bond Advisers: Pay-to-Play, Phantom Bonds, and a Serious Lack of Transparency

An article in yesterday's New York Times points to yet another clever end run around ethics laws involving municipal bonds. Bond underwriters are not allowed to make campaign contributions, to prevent a pay-to-play environment. However, financial advisers, the people who hook local governments up w…

Conflicts of Interest February 14, 2009

The Conflict of Interest That Keeps Conflicting

Here’s a new, foolproof way for an elected official to make some money on the side: loan money to your campaign, charge it a lot of interest, and then pay the loan principal off slowly, over a number of years. According to an article in yesterday’s Bloomberg.com, this is what Rep. Grace Napolitano …

Transparency & Disclosure February 13, 2009

Perks for Public Officials -- Transparency and Accountability

Perks that public officials give themselves should be monitored as carefully as gifts, campaign contributions, and relationships with contractors. But they are not. And they’re usually easy to hide. Rarely have perks been hidden as well as those of New York’s Republican state senators, who until th…

Conflicts of Interest February 13, 2009

The Responsibility of Lawyers and Other Professionals for Unethical Conduct

What is more horrible than the scheme of two eastern Pennsylvania judges to fill two for-profit juvenile detention centers with thousands of youths who would not otherwise have been removed from their families and schools? The fact that they could get away with it in the midst of a world of profess…

Local Government Practice February 12, 2009

Competitive Bidding vs. Development Opportunity

Should an option in a light-rail train car manufacturing contract be exercised, rather than going to a competitive bid, because the company says it will move its plant, and 5,000 jobs, into the county? This dilemma is being faced by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), and t…

Ethics Codes & Reform February 10, 2009

Fighting Last Year's War Is Not the Way to Draft an Ethics Code

Type "ethics" into the search line at utah.gov, and all that comes up is Archery Ethics Course Online. In response to what are referred to in Utah as last year's "ethics wars," a new legislative ethics bill has been drafted. What is interesting for local government ethics is how focused the new bil…

February 9, 2009

The Death of an Ethical Administrator

It's good to see that, upon his death, attention is being given to the life of Donald C. Alexander, the IRS Commissioner who stood up to President Nixon at the end of Nixon's time in office. According to the New York Times obituary, among Alexander's accomplishments was disbanding the Special Servi…

February 9, 2009

Michigan's Baby Step Toward Local Government Ethics

The Michigan House passed a bill in November requiring all local governments in Michigan to set up ethics boards. The bill, which amends the state ethics law, requires that ethics boards either use the state law, which is minimal, or that local governments pass their own ethics laws, with no restri…

Resources & Learning February 8, 2009

Folio Article: Miller's Crossing

When Mayor John Peyton decided to hire Carla Miller as Jacksonville’s Ethics Officer in 2007, the city was in crisis. A grand jury was investigating violations of state open-meeting laws by nearly every member of the former City Council. The FBI had begun sniffing around JaxPort, probing dubious co…

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