City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

November 24, 2010

Duty Does Not Equal Right, Duty Does Not Equal Right . . .

Update: December 1, 2010 (see below) Last week, the Texas Attorney General issued a legal opinion on the role of the county attorney in representing and advising the El Paso County ethics commission, which was established in 2009. The county attorney herself requested the opinion on behalf of the e…

Local Government Practice November 23, 2010

Educators' Obligation to Follow Government Ethics Rules or Argue Against Them

In a recent blog post, I wrote about how the mayor's selection for New York City schools chancellor needed to get a waiver from the state department of education because she lacked an educational background, and that she resigned corporate board positions to make it clear she was serious about taki…

November 23, 2010

Local + Regional Corruption = National Corruption

The spread of corruption from local to state to national is often ignored. And when corruption is discovered, there is much litigation. In fact, it's often hard to see corruption clearly here in the U.S. That's why the occasional look at corruption abroad is useful, like looking in an only slightly…

Conflicts of Interest November 22, 2010

The Conflicts of Teachers on School Boards

Teachers and teachers' family members seem to be just the sort of people to run for school boards. They have either the expertise and/or the interest in education. But with them come conflicts of interest, and these can cast doubt on what they're doing there in the first place. Teachers in the part…

Resources & Learning November 21, 2010

High Flying in The Fallen

I don't know how I failed to hear about this novel. Maybe I'm the last one on the block to do so, but it's been four years since T. Jefferson Parker's The Fallen was published. This detective novel involves the murder of an investigator for San Diego's "Ethics Authority," who falls from the sixth s…

Conflicts of Interest November 20, 2010

Handling an Indefinite Conflict Before It Becomes Definite

Indefinite conflicts can cause a lot of problems for officials. They see them as not yet ripe, not something they should have to deal with yet. But others see them as looming in the future, and want to know how the official plans to deal with them. One such indefinite conflict is the subject of con…

Ethics Codes & Reform November 19, 2010

How to Bring Contractors Into the Ethics Process

Another interesting ethics matter is raised in the article on the school board member in Santa Clara County (CA), which I discussed earlier today. The DA's office notes that the contractor, for whom the school board member had worked as a subcontractor, had no obligation to disclose the conflict, s…

Enforcement & Complaints November 19, 2010

In Ethics Enforcement, the Criminal Process Can Be Even Less Effective Than the Ballot Box

There are three basic approaches to enforcing ethics laws: through ethics commissions, through the criminal process, and through the ballot box. I strongly oppose using the criminal process for ethics violations (see an earlier blog post), and feel that the ballot box is far too crude a way to enf…

Conflicts of Interest November 18, 2010

A Family of Elected Officials

What do you do when you are not the only member of your immediate family who is an elected official? This question arose in Frederick County, MD, the home of Camp David. According to an article in the Frederick News Post this week, Ron Young was elected earlier this year as state senator for the co…

Conflicts of Interest November 17, 2010

A Gift of Books: Intellectual vs. Monetary Value

More from Madison. According to an article last month on the Channel3000.com website, a stagehands union sent 28 copies of a book on creating and maintaining healthy arts organizations to members of the Madison council and members of an ad hoc committee on the future of the city's arts center. The …

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