Conflicts

According to a Washington Post article this weekend, U.S. Senators Conrad and Dodd were cleared by the Senate Select Committee on Ethics with respect to the senators' membership in Countrywide Financial's VIP mortgage program. The committee concluded that the senators were given special treatment, …

The great majority of local governments that think they have no state or local law or rules regarding local officials' conflicts of interest do actually have a conflict of interest rule. This rule is hidden in Robert's Rules, which is usually the set of rules under which local government bodies ope…

According to an article in Tuesday's New York Times, nonprofits are seeking an exception to the Obama administration's rule that lobbyists cannot serve in areas where they have lobbied. This raises the issue of the purpose of revolving-door provisions, which are common in local government ethics co…

Individuals and companies doing the work of government or work approved by government, even when they do not have a direct financial relationship with government, should be within the jurisdiction of a government's ethics code. This controversial position is strengthened by what happened to many Te…

When I saw the headline from the Anchorage Daily News, "Palin Calls Blogger's Ethics Complaint Bogus," and saw that it had to do with clothing the governor wore, I thought I might write a piece about using ethics complaints for the purpose of political harassment. But when I read the article, I rea…

An article deep in the first section of this Sunday's New York Times presents an interesting ethical dilemma. In New York State, it used to be common for state troopers and local police officers to negotiate, effectively plea bargain, at the courthouse with people they'd given tickets to. And then,…

Here’s a new, foolproof way for an elected official to make some money on the side: loan money to your campaign, charge it a lot of interest, and then pay the loan principal off slowly, over a number of years. According to an article in yesterday’s Bloomberg.com, this is what Rep. Grace Napolitano …

Special districts are an important and growing form of local government, and yet they often fly beneath the radar. In fact, I've only mentioned them once in my blog. And most citizens have no idea what they are or that they exist in their area (I myself can't name one in my area). For this reason, …