According to an
article in the Palm Beach Daily News, Florida law "forbids
government bodies from advocating for voters to vote yes or no in a
referendum election, and from spending funds to advertise for that
purpose." But as with all laws, there are ways to end-run this
prohibition, and the town of Palm Beach's council and city...
Over-reaction to an alleged ethics violation can be as bad as
under-reaction. In Bergen County, NJ, after one of seven freeholders
(the county council), at his first meeting, voted to continue to
keep county funds in a bank owned by the parent of the company he works for, an
ethics complaint was filed and then the county administrator called on
all county offices to take their money out of the bank, according to...
The
Dallas Morning News on Wednesday ran a fascinating article about
Dallas County's district attorney. It caught my interest because he was
accused of a conflict of interest, but accusing this district attorney
of a conflict of interest is like accusing King Kong of being big.
When
I wrote about the disclosure controversy in Suffolk County back in
July, I didn't realize that another interesting ethics issue was going
on there. In late June, the county legislature had instituted an
investigation of the county ethics commission. One reason for this
investigation appears to be the commission's decision to allow the
county executive to file only a state disclosure form,...
In Milwaukee County, according to an
article in Sunday's Journal-Sentinel, a county supervisor is
seeking to add to the county
ethics code a confidential information provision that would not
limit the prohibition to what is common in ethics codes: information divulged for someone's benefit.
What is most remarkable about the proposed
code
of conduct for Santa Fe County (NM) is the fact that it was
drafted by the county attorney. It reads as if it were put together by
a citizens group in a community that has lost faith in its
government officials.