County Related

Back in January, I wrote a blog entry focusing on the lack of transparency in the credit rating business so central to the subprime mortgage mess that has brought the world economy to its knees. Transparency, it has become clear, is all important.

The same goes for conflicts of interest. The New York Times' article on...

It's not quite civil disobedience by county officials, but Michigan's senate majority leader has asked the Attorney General to block what those officials are doing, according to an article yesterday on mlive.com (Booth Newspapers). The officials are county clerks, and what they've done is to cross-deputize each other so that college students who want to register for the first...

I've already written about the conflict of interest problems involved in the New York City term limits dispute. But now the dispute is over, according to an article on today's New York Times website: the NYC Council chose to allow current elected officials to run beyond the term limit rules approved by citizens twice...

See update and second update below
People in the government ethics field can be very arrogant. I know I can. But it's horrible to see it in action, especially when it's turned against what we commonly think of as good government.

Fred Voigt is the deputy city election commissioner for Philadelphia, and former executive director of Philadelphia's Committee of Seventy, which describes itself as "a...

Sometimes city councils feel compelled to write or improve their city's ethics law due to a scandal. Sometimes city councils are compelled by a ballot measure. And in both instances, the council isn't happy with the result.

In San Diego, the ethics code came via ballot measure in 2002, and yes, the city council doesn't seem all that happy with the result. So it is doing what it can to undermine the ballot measure and to keep the ethics commission's work out of the public eye.

See Update below
Is there a conflict when a county prosecutor who is a presidential candidate's campaign chairman in the area subpoenas the voting records, including personal information, of certain voters who registered and voted at the same time during a short window when this is allowed in Ohio? Three more facts worth knowing, according to an article in today's...