County Related

It was exciting to see someone who made her reputation as a government ethics advocate named to the Republican ticket. But it was very troubling to read how she handled a recent revolving door matter.

It's tough to get rid of officials guilty of serious misconduct. Recall and impeachment are long, grueling processes, which are of no value late in an official's term. Rarely is removal from office for an ethics violation an option, and ethics investigations and hearings, including appeal to a court, can take a long time, as well. It's easier when an official has been found guilty of a crime, but there are all sorts of ways to delay a criminal case. In the meantime, a city or county...

What do sinkholes and poor drainage in a newly-built highway have to do with government ethics? Often, they are the result of incompetence. But they are also often the result of unethical conduct.

That seems to be the cause in Connecticut's big highway mess that has slowly been unveiled over the last two-and-a-half years, most recently in an article in the September issue of Connecticut magazine. The mess involves improvements to a 3-mile strip of Interstate 84, a $60-...

According to a recent article in the Daily Sentinel, a Mesa County (CO) Commissioner says that he is running for re-election on his energy-industry experience (he is a principal of an energy services company that contracts with local oil and gas companies). Energy appears to be a principal industry in Mesa County, and one that often comes before the County Commission.
...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has come up with a new defense of a potential conflict of interest: "I'm investing in something I believe in."

What she was investing in, as "part of an entrepreneurial package," as she said on yesterday's Meet the Press, according to a partial transcript, was T. Boone Pickens' Clean Energy Fuels Corp., which despite Pickens' emphasis on wind power, also...

I'd like to follow up on what I said at the end of yesterday's blog entry, about jurisdictions that make ethics violations criminal and require a showing of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and a showing of intentionality or recklessness or negligence. Here is the penalty provision in the Arizona Conduct of Office chapter, which applies equally to local governments (to see the entire chapter, click...