City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

Conflicts of Interest December 24, 2010

Conflicts and Fraud

If "conflict of interest" were a cause of action, what would it be? A matter right in the small city next to my town answers this question, and gives a new angle by which to view conflicts. According to court documents cited (and linked to) by an article in the New Haven Register this week, in 2009…

December 23, 2010

A Miscellany

Government Executives and the Ethics Commission Selection Process Should government chief executives appoint ethics commission members or their staff? The common practice is that they usually do. But the common practice is not necessarily the best practice, especially when it puts a conflict of int…

December 22, 2010

Large Contracts, Bid Rigging, and Pension Boards in Detroit

What can local government ethics professionals learn from what has come out in the recent indictments of former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, his father, the city's director of water and sewerage, Kilpatrick's CAO and CIO, and a city contractor? According to the Detroit Free Press's time line, it…

Conflicts of Interest December 21, 2010

A Gift Exception That Undermines the Rule

My last blog post involved the Baltimore Employees' Retirement System board calling in an image consultant to help protect it from an investigation by the city's ethics board. This blog post will look at why there is an investigation (again, I could not find any minutes posted, so I am dependent on…

Local Government Practice December 21, 2010

The Image Consultant's Role in Local Government Ethics

Things have changed. It used to be that the first thing you did when you found out the local ethics commission was investigating you was hire a lawyer (which is itself a change from the days when you found out you were being investigated by the D.A. and handed him a bribe). In this era of the image…

December 20, 2010

A Miscellany

A Failure to Respond to an Ethics Complaint It's always interesting to see how many ways there are not to deal with ethics complaints. When you think you've seen them all, a new one comes out of nowhere. In this case, nowhere is Taylor, Michigan, a city of 65,000 outside Detroit. According to an ar…

Ethics Codes & Reform December 20, 2010

Mack Truck Exceptions to New Gift Provisions in Alabama

People in Alabama are falling over each other claiming that their ethics reforms give the state the best, toughest ethics laws in the nation. But when you take a closer look, some of them don't look all that good. A principal reform involves finally placing limits on gifts, apparently a radical mov…

Ethics Codes & Reform December 18, 2010

Ethics Reform via Referendum, and Some Valuable Practices from New York City

Referendum Requires Ethics Training and Increases Penalties I learned at the COGEL conference last week that a referendum passed in New York City last month requires all city officials and employees to receive conflict of interest training. The Conflicts of Interest Board (COIB) does provide traini…

Enforcement & Complaints December 16, 2010

A Six-Year Legal Battle Between a County Ethics Commission and a Former County Attorney

At last week's COGEL conference, I learned about a judicial case involving the Anne Arundel County (MD) Ethics Commission, which has been going on for six years. A decision of the Court of Special Appeals last November is worth a look. There's a lot of interesting material for local government ethi…

Conflicts of Interest December 16, 2010

In Baltimore County, A Chinese Wall Is Not the Answer

Chinese walls, that is, ways to separate an official from a matter as to which he has a conflict, are a perfect way to appear to be responsibly handling a series of possible conflicts, but are these walls great or are they window dressing? And even if the walls truly work, are they enough to deal r…

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