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Ethics Commissions & Administration June 5, 2012

The Problems with Nominating a Top Government Lawyer to Sit on an Ethics Commission

What does it mean to be a "high-caliber" nominee for a position on a local ethics commission? Does it mean someone who has been in law enforcement, a prosecutor or judge whose presence sends the message that the law will be enforced? Or does it mean someone who appears to be independent of the loca…
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Conflicts of Interest June 5, 2012

What to Do, and Not to Do, When a Conflict Situation Becomes Public

What is the worst thing a government official can do when a conflict situation becomes public? Is it worse to misrepresent the law, to make accusations against those making the conflict situation public, or to ignore the situation and hope nobody notices? New York governor Andrew Cuomo has done all…
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Transparency & Disclosure June 4, 2012

A Government Ethics Approach to Open Records

Luis Toro, the director of Colorado Ethics Watch, raised an important local government ethics issue in a recent Huffington Post post. It is a problem that is not peculiar to Colorado. It is also a problem that could benefit from a government ethics approach. Here is the problem in a nutshell: "Alth…
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Ethics Commissions & Administration June 1, 2012

How to Deal with a Conflict at the Center of a Conflict of Interest Program

Update: July 17, 2012 (see end of this post) Here's an interesting conflict situation from Concord, NH. According to a recent article in the Concord Patch, a state representative filed ethics complaints against Concord's mayor and one of the city's council members. Since the mayor and city manager …
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Conflicts of Interest May 31, 2012

Legislative Immunity: An Official's Motive Is Not At Issue in a Conflict Situation

A poor and disconcerting judicial decision on local legislative immunity came down on May 24 from the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, Kickapoo Tribe v. Black. The tribe made the argument in its brief that a watershed district board's members should not be able to raise a defense of …
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Resources & Learning May 31, 2012

Book Excerpt 1: Fiduciary Duty

This is the first of a series of posts that will pull out valuable pieces from my new book Local Government Ethics Programs. One reason that government ethics is described in terms of obligations is that government officials have a fiduciary duty or obligation toward the community for which they wo…
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Local Government Practice May 30, 2012

A Special Ordinance Is Not the Way to Provide a Waiver

There are usually many ways to deal responsibly with a conflict situation. But there are also many irresponsible ways to deal with a conflict situation. One of the irresponsible ways is to be considered today in Portland, OR, according to an article on the KATU News website. The conflict situation …
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Local Government Practice May 29, 2012

How a Mayor's Special Obligations Affect His Right to Remain Silent

Washington Post columnist Robert McCartney raised an issue in a column this weekend that I feel should be taken seriously. The background story is that two of the current D.C. mayor's campaign aides confessed to having paid a mayoral candidate, and offered him a job in the coming administration, fo…
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May 27, 2012

Treating Inmates as Commodities in Louisiana Is a Local Government Ethics Problem

Louisiana Incarcerated is an investigative series that ran recently in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. It is a story rooted in an extremely poor ethics environment that, despite vaunted ethics reforms (that many, including me, have criticized), does not seem to have changed. The series has introduc…
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Enforcement & Complaints May 24, 2012

A Valuable Essay on Pension Forfeiture

Check out a valuable essay on pension forfeiture by Dylan Scott, which was posted on the Governing website in February. The essay looks at the various arguments for and against pension forfeiture, looks at how these laws come about (after scandals), and provides information about state pension forf…
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