City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

Conflicts of Interest August 7, 2012

Elected Officials Doing Business Together

Should council members do business with each other or with the mayor? Another way to put this question is, does their doing business together give rise to a conflict of interest? The situation that gave rise to these questions came out recently in Hoboken, NJ. According to an article in the Hudson …

Local Government Practice August 6, 2012

Abuse of Citizen Ignorance in an Ethics-Related Referendum

Update: August 9, 2012 (see below) People tend to think that all good government people are alike. The thinking goes that those who favor the improvement of ethics programs also favor such things as term limits, referendums and initiatives, and pension forfeiture by those found to have violated the…

Ethics Commissions & Administration August 6, 2012

Another Reason Not to Let an Ethics Program Become Moribund

Here's an all too common scenario: A local government creates an ethics program after a scandal, and time passes either without another scandal or with a change of administration. The new administration sees the ethics program as unnecessary, and decides not to fund the program and not to replace …

Conflicts of Interest August 2, 2012

The Conflicts of Colorado's Public Trustees

Luis Toro, director of Colorado Watch, wrote an interesting Huffington Post post yesterday about ethics issues relating to Colorado's public trustee system. Public trustees (one per county) oversee the foreclosure system in the state. They work things out between lenders and homeowners. Most of the…

Transparency & Disclosure August 2, 2012

Stakeholders and Local Government Transparency

Corporate executives have obligations not only to stockholders, but also to other stakeholders, including customers, creditors, and the greater community. However, government officials, at least from the government ethics point of view, have overwhelming obligations only to members of their immedia…

Enforcement & Complaints August 1, 2012

Misuse of Ethics Enforcement Process

It's always disheartening to see high-level officials misuse an ethics program for the sake of personal revenge or, as the official says in the case I'm looking at here, to get "my name cleared." According to an article yesterday in the Austin Statesman, the last mayor recently filed two ethics com…

August 1, 2012

Maryland Local Ethics Requirements

It's a good idea for states to encourage the creation of local government ethics programs by drafting model ethics codes. It's also a good idea for states to require minimal local government ethics provisions. What is not good is model codes and minimal requirements that are not accompanied by expl…

July 28, 2012

A Miscellany

A Complex School Board Conflict Situation Should someone closely associated with an organization that has been awarded a sizeable preschool contract be prevented from sitting on a school board when the contract was not with the school board? That is one of the questions raised by an article this we…

Enforcement & Complaints July 27, 2012

When a Respondent Seeks to Meet with a Complainant

An interesting question arose in an ethics proceeding in Kennesaw, GA, a city of 30,000 just outside of Atlanta. According to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and a Kennesaw Watch blog post, both dated July 17, soon after an ethics complaint was filed against the city's mayor, the may…

July 27, 2012

Summer Reading: Thirst for Growth

Anyone who has seen the movie Chinatown has some idea how much ethical misconduct went into the ongoing battles over water in California. Those who want to get down to the nitty gritty of it will enjoy Robert Gottlieb and Margaret Fitzsimmon's Thirst for Growth: Water Agencies as Hidden Government …

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