County Related

A few local government ethics issues come together in the story behind the arrest today of 44 people in a political corruption and international money laundering ring based in New Jersey. The story is best told, so far, in the press release of the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.

Among...

One problem local governments have in drafting ethics codes is that they want it to be too many things, to serve too many purposes. They want it to be an aspirational code of conduct, making local government more civil and government officials more honest and fair. They want it to make officials follow all relevant laws and constitutional provisions. And they want it to deal with conflicts of interest, that is, with the situations where personal interests may be placed above the public interest...

Last week, I wrote about municipal corruption scandals in Montreal. This week, I'm happy to be able to write about a report requested by the province of Quebec, which determined that the province's municipalities should all have a code of ethics (only about 10% do now), that the largest cities and the counties should have ethics commissioners, and that financial disclosure and ethics training should be required. Contractors...

Ethics Reform and Ethics Environments
This weekend, the Press-Enterprise ran an excellent editorial about ethics reform in San Bernardino County. Not only do the editors recognize that watered-down, "symbolic" ethics reform is worthless, but they also recognize that even valuable ethics reform, such as a proposed sunshine ordinance...

As I have noted again and again, there is no more difficult, conflicted role than that of a local government attorney. In small towns, there's not a lot that can be done. But in cities and counties, there are several things that can be done to lessen the local government attorney's conflicts.

The Politicization of Officials Selecting Ethics Commission Members
People should not be political footballs, and ethics commission members even moreso. But that's what can happen when officials are allowed to select ethics commission members. According to an article in yesterday's Tulsa ...