In a
New York Times column today, Michael Powell has unearthed an
ugly-looking government ethics situation in New Jersey involving apparent misuse of government ethics authority to win a vote.
The fact situation is fairly typical. What is not typical is the way
it has been handled. A gas company is seeking permission to put a...
In a
blog post last week, I listed the many reasons why city and
county attorneys should not be providing ethics advice. One of those
reasons was that "legal advice and ethics advice require different
skill sets." But I limited this part of my analysis to saying
that "A legal
adviser sticks to the letter of the law, and is always on the
lookout for...
Sometimes, conflict of interest matters come disguised as election
law matters. Most of the time, due to secrecy, laziness, or an
inability to draw lines between the dots, no one recognizes the
conflict of interest matter. But sometimes, someone gives the game
away, and it becomes clear how inextricable the two areas can be.
A
recent Miami Herald article describes a case that embodies a number of important government ethics issues, including the conflict issues
that involve local schools of higher education, gifts to officials' relatives and the officials' knowledge of them, an ethics program's jurisdiction over these relatives, and whether government attorneys should provide...
It all started with the indictment, on charges of bribery and theft,
of a Fats, Oil & Grease inspector back in November 2010. It led
to an 83-page grand jury report in August 2013, which set out the misconduct involving the DeKalb County (GA) Department of
Watershed Management (DWM) procurement process, and made
recommendations not only for indictments, but also for an...
Court decisions, especially when combined with criminal enforcement
of ethics violations, can be very harmful to local government ethics. The court in a Monterey County case involving a serious §1090
conflict of interest matter that officials were not only aware of,
but appear to have helped create, has used two recent California
court decisions to limit prosecution to...