City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

Conflicts of Interest April 11, 2012

The Quid Pro Quo of Social Relationships

An excellent article on the front page of last Sunday's New York Times looks at a proposal by the federal Office of Governmental Ethics (OGE) to limit two exceptions to the prohibition on accepting gifts from lobbyists: the "widely-attended gathering" (WAG) exception and the "social invitations" e…

Ethics Commissions & Administration April 4, 2012

Beyond the Criminal Enforcement Paradigm: Dealing with Unwritten Rules

I have written about the need for ethics commissions to go beyond the criminal enforcement paradigm, which limits commissions to determining whether an individual respondent has violated an ethics provision or not. It is hard to find instances of a commission looking at the bigger picture, that is,…

Local Government Practice April 3, 2012

Participatory Budgeting as Solution to Council District Discretionary Fund Problems

One of the most damaging aspects of ethical misconduct in government is that it decreases the amount of citizen participation in government activities. People feel that their local government is rigged to help politicians and their families, friends, and business associates. It's not worth spending…

Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play March 29, 2012

The Black Boxes Known as Campaign Vendors

ProPublica ran an excellent article yesterday by Kim Barker and Al Shaw about campaign, PAC, and Super PAC coordination and self-dealing, primarily at the presidential level. What is so special about the article is that it follows the money to where it is being spent. The authors found that many PA…

Enforcement & Complaints March 23, 2012

Reward and Investigation Tips from Ireland

A few days too late for St. Patrick's Day, today's Irish Examiner has a wonderful story about catching officials involved in ethical misconduct relating to land use. It's an old story, but new to me, and probably new to you, as well. The occasion of the article is the publication of a 3,270-page re…

Conflicts of Interest March 17, 2012

Gifts with No Financial Value

It's amazing the lengths people will go to when they are accused of bribery. Take Zehy Jereis, a former Yonkers, NY party chair who gave nearly $175,000 to a Yonkers council member, and is being accused of doing this in order to get her to make a pivotal vote in favor of his client's controversial …

Ethics Commissions & Administration March 15, 2012

Mayoral and Council Interference with EC Member and Staff Selection

The independence of ethics commissions and their staff is the single most important aspect of a government ethics program. Who selects the commission members and their staff, and how, colors everything about an ethics program and determines, more than any other factor, whether the public has confid…

March 5, 2012

Carlos Fuentes on Government Ethics

The great Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes' 2006 novel, The Eagle's Throne, translated from the Spanish by Kristina Cordero, is one of the best political novels I've ever read. I highly recommend it. The novel also happens to contain some great quotes that touch on government ethics. The government …

Ethics Codes & Reform March 1, 2012

Two Aspects of a Poor Ethics Environment

I never know where I'm going to find something that inspires a blog post on local government ethics. This time it was an essay by Tim Parks in the March 8 issue of the New York Review of Books, as well as on the NYRBlog. The essay is about Italy, and the possibility for change in its government, ec…

February 22, 2012

Quote of the Day

I did stop and and try to invoke legislative immunity, but the camera would have none of it. —State senator Steve King of Grand Junction, CO, a career police officer, said jokingly about a red-light-camera ticket he received in Denver. He voted against banning red-light cameras in Colorado's munici…

Subscribe to