City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

Conflicts of Interest January 28, 2011

The Need for a Revolving Door Provision, and More, in Hartford

According to an article in Tuesday's Hartford Advocate, a complaint has been filed with Hartford's ethics commission by a council member against the former corporation counsel on the grounds that he had taken a job with a law firm that had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts overseen by the corporation counsel.

January 27, 2011

Conflict Over a Gift in Poughkeepsie

Sometimes a conflict situation makes you take a fresh look at common ethics provisions. This is true of a matter that has arisen in Poughkeepsie, New York (pronounced Pah-kip'-see), home of Vassar College, according to an article in Tuesday's Poughkeepsie Journal.

Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play January 26, 2011

Logical Fallacies VI - The Slippery Slope

In a Pay to Play Law Blog response to my recent blog post on a discussion that had appeared in the Pay to Play Law Blog, the argument is made that pay-to-play laws that go beyond disclosure, such as prohibiting campaign contributions from government contractors, set up a slippery slope toward the undermining of constitutional rights and toward higher compliance costs by law-abiding companies. This argument turns out to be a logical fallacy, which allows me to get bac

Conflicts of Interest January 25, 2011

Separating the Personal from the Public: Two Examples

Alabama's new governor, Robert Bentley, said last week in a speech that people who do not accept Jesus as their savior are not his brother or his sister. Leaving the religious aspects of this aside, there are two important government ethics issues here, one involving preferential treatment and the other involving the core government ethics issue, the confusion of self and office.

January 24, 2011

An Ethics Board Chair Who Should Not Have Been on the Board Refuses to Discuss His Own Conflict

The most underrated aspect of accountability is the need for government officials to honestly and publicly explain why they do what they do. This need is strongest for two groups of officials: elected representatives and their watchdogs.

It is, therefore, painful to see the chair of a major county board of ethics refusing to even speak to the press about his own possible conflict of interest. You can see it, too, in a video at the WGN-TV website.

January 21, 2011

Houston Ethics Reform II: The Ethics Provisions

There are several problems with Houston's new ethics provisions, in addition to what I pointed out in my last blog post. Some of them are typical, some of them are unusual. The ethics reform ordinance is attached; see below; the old ethics ordinance can be found by clicking here and scrolling down on the left to Code of Ordinances Chapter 18).

Impropriety and Misconduct

January 21, 2011

Houston Ethics Reform I: The Ethics Commission and What People Are Saying

Last week, the Houston council passed a number of amendments to its ethics ordinance. They were billed as a big step forwards, but I do not agree. In this post, I will look at what people have been saying about the reforms and how the role of the ethics commission has changed. In the next post I will take a critical look at the new provisions.

State Law and Criminalizing Ethics

Campaign Finance & Pay-to-Play January 19, 2011

Responding to Arguments Against Significant Restrictions on Pay-to-Play

This week, the Pay to Play Law Blog took a snapshot of the status of pay-to-play laws across the country, breaking them down into four categories: jurisdictions that impose significant restrictions, including debarment; jurisdictions that require disclosure; jurisdictions with limited requirements; and jurisdictions that are considering pay-to-play laws.

January 18, 2011

Legislative Immunity's Effect on Recent Investigations of Members of Congress

Yesterday's Washington Post has a long article on a topic one would expect to find in a law review: the effect of the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause on the prosecution of members of Congress.

The article starts out with a strong statement: "A constitutional clash over whether House members are immune from many forms of Justice Department scrutiny has helped derail or slow several recent corruption investigations of lawmakers."

January 15, 2011

Insurance Schemes

Insurance is a big area for abuse in local government. It usually constitutes a sizeable dollar percentage of a town's contracts, and an insurance broker who works in government can use his or her position to get the insurance business of companies that do or want to do business with the town. And insurance is an area few people understand, and which no department, office, or board may be responsible for overseeing.

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