The mayor of Baltimore is on trial for stealing $1,500 in gift cards,
allegedly intended for poor Baltimore residents. A letter
to the editor of the Baltimore Sun proposes a better approach
than a trial costing hundreds of thousands of dollars:
In past blog posts, I
have focused on the perjury charges against Baltimore mayor Sheila
Dixon that relate to her failure to disclose gifts from a developer who
was seeking tax breaks. But today, Dixon goes on trial for theft
involving gift cards allegedly given to the office of the city council
president, which she filled at the time, and used by her for personal
purchases.
Many of the most difficult situations in government ethics involve
relationships that are not direct. For example, situations where the
company that provides a benefit does not do business with the local
government, but is owned by someone who owns another company that does
do business with or have an interest in legislation before the local
government (click here for
a recent example). Technically, the company...
According to an
article in this week's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a rule
prohibiting Georgia state employees from accepting gifts over $25 is
not being enforced. At all.
How does the paper know these gifts are being made? Because lobbyists
have to disclose their spending on state employees as well as on
legislators (who are not restricted from taking such gifts). Governor...
Here are two interesting local government ethics case studies from
matters in the news this week.
A Job Can Effectively Be a Gift
According to an
article in the Spokesman-Review,
a Spokane council member requested an advisory opinion from the city's
ethics committee after his
successful push to change city regulations to allow bus bench...
I've
talked about legal defense funds in the past as a way to accept
large gifts from those doing business with a local government, but I
referred, tangentially, to only one local government legal
defense fund, that of
former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. So I did some research and
came up with a few other examples, which are worth knowing about if the...