Conflicts of Interest March 1, 2011

Local Officials Sitting on Community Boards

I don't usually turn over an entire blog post to someone else, although I would like very much to do it. This letter to the editor by Kevin Haggerty, the Lackawanna County (PA) deputy director of government and community affairs (and candidate for state representative), which appeared in the Times …
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March 1, 2011

Miscellany of a Hundred Eyes

Let's Not Drink to It Yes, it has happened. Local government ethics has been compared to Prohibition. According to an article in the La Porte (IN) Herald Argus last Friday, this comparison was made by a superior court judge in town, who said that Prohibition "was intended to increase the productivi…
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February 27, 2011

Local Legislative Immunity Bill in Virginia Fails

Here's a curiosity relating to local official legislative immunity. According to an article in statehousenewsonline.com on Friday, Virginia state senator Chap Peterson sponsored a bill to give local officials in Virginia legislative immunity. The bill would have added the following provision to the…
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February 26, 2011

A Miscellany

Conflicting Employment Is Nothing to Rave About Some forms of conflicting employment are wrong to the extent that the only way to handle the conflict responsibly is to resign from one of the jobs. If this is not done, even a minor conflict can be very damaging, especially when there are already oth…
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February 25, 2011

Opposing Public Sector Union Conflicts — Out of Context

It's nice to see conflicts of interest being opposed by political party leaders, but not when they're taken out of context. The opposition this week has been limited to public sector unions. The conflict involves public sector unions making contributions to candidates who will be in a position to d…
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Conflicts of Interest February 24, 2011

Three Conflict Case Studies

Here are three interesting conflict of interest case studies from Tuesday's news. Conflicts That Make You Act Differently, and Imaginative Resolutions According to an article in the Los Angeles Daily Breeze, a former Los Angeles airport attorney, who reviewed the paperwork submitted by four compani…
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Enforcement & Complaints February 23, 2011

Serious Penalties — Criminal vs. Civil

I'm going to keep showing how wrong the criminal enforcement of ethics laws is until there is at least some sign of movement away from it. This time I will do it by looking at two recent proceedings in which serious penalties are involved, one criminal, the other civil. The criminal penalties are a…
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