October 25, 2013

Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

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 fac…
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Conflicts of Interest October 24, 2013

The Fiduciary Duty of Government Consultants

A recent City Ethics blog post discusses the value of a functional definition of a government employee with respect to government ethics. That is, a private individual who does government work for the government has the same obligations to the community as a government employee. Since a government …
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Conflicts of Interest October 21, 2013

Problems with the Disqualification Argument

A colleague asked me recently about the argument that withdrawal from participation by a legislator, who cannot delegate to someone else, "disenfranchises" that legislator's constituents. Since disenfranchisement is a terrible thing, the argument goes, legislators cannot be asked to withdraw from p…
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Conflicts of Interest October 17, 2013

Negative Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest are not always positive, any more than relationships are always positive. And conflicts are based on relationships. We tend to think of an official using his position to help a family member or business associate. But sometimes officials use their position to harm someone with…
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October 17, 2013

Jurisdiction Over a Mayor-Elect, and Misconduct Disclaimers

There are two interesting wrinkles in the Forest Park, GA case I wrote about in the last blog post. According to an article in the Clayton News Daily last Friday, a former Forest Park public works director alleged in an ethics complaint that, in an e-mail message, the mayor had illegally ordered th…
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