City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

Conflicts of Interest April 19, 2008

Council Earmarks Create a Serious Conflict of Interest Situation

Earmarks are usually dealt with as a spending and democracy problem. All that money being thrown away on projects no one actually votes to fund. But earmarks are also a conflict of interest issue, as can be seen in what has come out regarding the New York City Council. I recently wrote about the transparency aspect of the Council’s hidden earmarks.

Transparency & Disclosure April 18, 2008

Lobbyist Disclosure and Attorney-Client Privilege

City Ethics’ very own Carla Miller (also the Jacksonville Ethics Officer) is in the news this week with an important municipal ethics dispute.

April 16, 2008

Shorstein: lobbyist rules should be enforced

04/16/2008
by David Chapman
Staff Writer
From: http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=49846

As of Tuesday, discussions between the City Ethics Commission and Office of General Counsel were ongoing about how to handle the issue of 10 area lobbyists not in compliance with new code requirements regarding disclosure of clients.

Conflicts of Interest April 15, 2008

Scientists Lead the Way to Refusing Honoraria

Many municipal codes of ethics, including the City Ethics Model Code (Section 100(15)), contain a provision prohibiting the acceptance of fees and honoraria for articles, appearances, or speeches. Today’s New York Times Science section contains an article about research scientists starting to refuse fees and honoraria.

April 14, 2008

How Entitled Should Voter Registration Employees Feel?

People use sunshine laws to retaliate against political opponents (it’s easy to find technical violations and use them to show an opponent is not being open; and you don’t even have to find them: newspapers write up baseless allegations just the same). But it is rare that sunshine laws lead to fisticuffs.

April 12, 2008

New city ethics regulations face first challenges

This story can be found on Jacksonville.com at http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/041208/met_267642192.shtml.

The Florida Times-Union
April 12, 2008
By BETH KORMANIK,
The Times-Union

Ethics Commissions & Administration April 11, 2008

The Duties of Ethics Board Members: The Bad Example of Detroit

Do ethics board members have a duty to follow more than the letter of their ethics code? This issue has arisen with respect to the Detroit Board of Ethics. The Board’s chair, attorney Reginald Turner, joined the membership (that is, fundraising) committee of a defense fund for Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. A complaint has been filed against the mayor with the Board of Ethics. Therefore, the Board chair is helping to raise funds to defend against a case that may come before the Board.

April 10, 2008

Eastern Oregon Takes on Government Transparency

Financial disclosure scares citizens away from sitting on local boards and commissions. This is the “fact” stated every time any level of financial disclosure is discussed. In my state, Connecticut, all the financial disclosure that was required in a recent bill was the name of one’s employer, and yet the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities opposed it with the same old canard. “Canard” is French for “duck” or, more appropriately in this case, “Duck!” which is effectively what municipal officials are saying when they oppose financial disclosure.

Local Government Practice April 7, 2008

The Hatch Act's Restrictions on Running for Local Government Office

There is one local government conflict of interest that is often ignored because it was created at the federal level by a federal statute. The statute is known as the Hatch Act of 1939 (Title 5, Subchapter III), originally known as An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities (they don’t make statute names like they used to). The Hatch Act limits the political activities of local government employees who are principally employed by programs funded in whole or in part by the U.S.

Transparency & Disclosure April 5, 2008

Transparency vs. Fear

New York politicians are making life hard for ethical politicians. “Present yourself as ethical,” they are effectively telling them, “and everyone will be harder on you when you don’t live up to expectations.

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